Stars of Iron  Snakepit Vol 2
by Dark Schtroumpf
Summary: This is the continuation of Snakepit, a Draka-SG crossover. AU, Earth here is Drakaverse Earth post-Final War. Consider a distant parallel universe to the original SGverse. Will earn its M rating.
1. Prologue

_Hello again returning readers. This is Volume 2 of my Drakaverse-Stargate crossover story. Um, not much else to say except "Thanks for reading" :-)_

**STARS OF IRON**

**Prologue**

Eons had passed since living beings had last visited that particular star system. It was merely one of many in that region of space, much closer to the galactic core than Earth was. Countless stars could be seen by the naked eye from the surface of its planetary bodies - those that did have a solid surface, at least - at night, their sheer density making the local nights as brilliant as full moon on Earth, a spectacular light display of bright pinpoints and diffuse glowing nebulae and a huge glowing cloud that was the galactic core itself, lit from within by the colossal energies it contained.

An eternity ago, the ancient civilization that seeded the galaxy with a network of connected stargates and engineered habitable worlds had taken advantage of the energy and resource rich region of space to fuel the industrial machine that produced the massive roving world-shapers. Thanks to the myriad burning starforges, planets and asteroids showed an abundance of stable superheavy elements unmatched in the more distant reaches of the galaxy, elements that enabled the gate-builders civilization to thrive and sustained its needs over the thousand centuries it lasted at its height, until they, too floundered and fell into almost oblivion, remembered as tales and fragmentary stories and leftover wonders, save a handful of younger civilizations that nevertheless managed to rival its power, if not sheer expanse.

Thousands of years after the last gate-builders had left the stage their accomplishments were still remembered in the memories of those species that stood as equals at their side.

And despite the march of time and the upheavals it brought along, some testimonials of the Gate-builders glory remained intact and untouched by the new masters of the Milky Way, protected by time and secrecy and lost in the sheer vastness of space.

Few Asgards still knew about the seemingly unimportant star system where representatives of the Great Four had once congregated under the patronage of the Gate-builders. The place was left alone after the demise of its owners and the great alliance withered away.

There was an almost taboo associated with it, the symbol of past greatness now abandoned and useless, even the technology it contained grown mundane next to the other great races' own accomplishments. No Asgard had had an interest in it for millennias. None except one, that is, and then Loki had only viewed the old facility as a curiosity, until it provided an answer to a particular consequence of his on-and-off meddling with the evolution of a world whose importance was easily overlooked - by his own race as well as the tyrannical Goa'uld. Well, at least nobody else looked over his shoulder to prevent his behind-the-scene meddling. And there was no trace of it. If the Supreme Council ever sniffed around he could deny any intervention - after all it wasn't the first human planet to reach a post-industrial level.

If they investigated deeper, then they might wonder about some discrepancies, but no concrete evidence there either.

At least until it came to his blatant and direct intervention in the _New America_'s case. Towing a human colony ship to the other side of the galaxy was breaking every rule about non-intervention and in a manner that left little doubt if anyone bothered to look into it. Fortunately, the whole Asgard species had been so giddy with Loki's out of the blue solution to the Replicator threat, literally saved from the brink of extinction at the last moment, that the Supreme Council had swallowed his explanation hook, line and sinker. Commander Thor's inner suspicions couldn't prevail against the wave of popular gratitude for their savior, specially after his own resurrection from backup mindstate was only possible thanks to the victory Loki had brought on a trinium platter.

Between this and the need to rebuild the shattered Ida home galaxy, nobody would expend the effort to check Loki's statements.

And assuming the most probable computed scenarios panned out as expected, by the time anyone ever got wind of his little fate-pushing in the Milky Way it would be too late to do anything but watch the fireworks. It was a brilliant plan. In a few decades, the Goa'uld would be caught between hammer and anvil. Whether it was hammer or anvil that survived the ensuing shock didn't matter as long as the Goa'uld upstarts were reduced to paste in the middle.

Loki rather looked forward to that. What were decades or even centuries to a being like him ? There still was the nagging problem of his species genetic decay, but in the worst case scenario he was prepared to simply shed off biological existence and continue living as an uploaded mind.

In any case, now he had ample time to tinker. Maybe even take a little jaunt out in the neighbouring galaxies where Ancient facilities were rumored to still exist.

Far below the lofty machinations of ancient alien beings, a starship hung over a dead planet in orbit of that unremarkable star. The ship itself represented the pinnacle of its creators' prowess as well as their salvation, liberty's own liferaft fleeing the wreck of Earth's freedom, bound for a star four lightyears away from Sol, a journey that should have taken the next fourty years spent with most of the crew in cryogenic storage.

That plan had gone overboard.

**General Frederick Lafarge's personal diary**

**Date of entry 28****th**** October 2010 (Earth reckoning)**

I shouldn't even be writing this now. I'm looking at the date displayed by the mission computer, and I can't help wondering if this is some kind of dream I'm having while my body's frozen. Even though this should be impossible, impossible seems a valid adjective for the situation as I discovered it upon my premature thawing. It felt as if no time had passed since I went into cold storage but at least the unexpected developments kept me from dwelling in reflections about the war and how it could all have been different. If only. The words are still there and painful as ever, but I keep telling myself we should all look forward. No point looking back now. Especially not now, when the answer to the centuries-old question of makind just received an answer, as enigmatic as it came : we are not alone.

Whatever happened to the _New America_ can't have been a natural occurrence. Not with an obviously artificial structure waiting at the other end. Who built it ? Is it the same people who have somehow hijacked our journey ? Did they bring us here on purpose ? Why ? Is it a gift or a curse ?

So many questions and so many new perspectives. Faster than light travel at least. Captain Galloway's crew checked as soon as they managed to get a location fix, we are still in the Milky Way, and the elapsed time according to astrometric data is exactly what the onboard clock says.

In the Milky Way but far from Sol. According to the plot we're much closer to the galactic core, on the opposite side of Earth itself and apparently the relative motion is quite stable. Which means we can't directly observe the Solar System (the core's in the way) and the reverse is true.

And it means one important thing : whatever we do here, the Snakes won't know.

Yet now we know FTL travel can be done. And the sheer size of that construction out there is pretty telling. If we ever manage to master the principles that made it all possible, then we'll be able to build an army to crush the Snakes one day… and they won't even know it until it happens.

That's one possibility. By the time we're able to do that, who knows, maybe they'll have been left alone for so long that they'll have duelled each other to extinction. That would be quite fitting a fate.

But that's for a distant future (besides, I wonder what they're going to think when the _New America_ disappears from their scopes !). In the immediate time we need to survive and rebuild a working cilivization. And grow in numbers before we can ever hope to accomplish much besides.

I have the premonition that whatever we find on this floating island in space will be key to everything.

There is life over there, or at least an environment that's conducive to life. A nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, water vapor clouds. Which incidently hide much of the external surface, the pictures only show sea and glimpses of dry land and radar scans are blocked by the transparent dome - a wonder in itself given its sheer size and the material strength it presupposes.

The probe managed to get very close to the edge of the… dish ? saucer ? disk ? It's more like a flower without the petals. As close as a hundred meters and no hostile reaction was registered coming from the alien facility. No reaction at all that we could discern in any case.

The vertical edge below the clear dome looks like a giant cliff of the same burnished grey metal seen everywhere else. It goes for three kilometers before the surface curves inward towards the stalk giving it the shape of a shallow cup, and there are abstract geometric patterns. What looks like a huge rosace on the curving underside, and matched entrelacs on the vertical band. It looks pretty, but whether it's purely for aesthetics or there's a more practical reason, we have no idea. There are all sorts of grooves and ridges and unconnected polygonal shapes that may or may not be doors.

The first probe is still taking high resolution pictures of the surface, focusing on the sideband since that's where hangars doors or access hatches are most likely to be found. Three more probes was dispatched two hours ago in order to speed up the process.

I took the decision to wake up more crews as well. There's an asteroid belt and several rocky moons in the system and we need to ascertain the resources we can access.

On the plus side, we have enough antimatter to last a century and more if we're careful. Assuming we settle here, of course. And this decision depends on whether we can gain access to the alien station and live on it.

**Uncharted star system**

**2010, November 2****nd**

It was an ugly and utilitarian contraption, a soda-can shaped pressurized compartment on top of a clump of spherical propellant tanks, and a cryogenic engine nested at the end. One of the _New America_'s small runabouts, designed to carry small numbers of personnel or cargo between orbiting starships. Not a heavy lift vehicle and not for endo-atmospheric use owing to its complete lack of aerodynamic considerations and paltry liquid fuel engines, the craft was attached to the hull of the ADSF _Barcelona,_ one of the antimatter-powered parasite cruisers that formed the colony ship's strike wing. She was named after the martyr Spanish city whose inhabitants had rebelled against Draka rule after the Eurasian War, only to be crushed by a Snake fission bomb. One atrocity amongst many in the dark years that followed the end of the war, as the Domination raped and pillaged Europe herself and drove her populations under the hated Yoke.

The name would always be remembered, as many others. The Snakes had killed or enslaved countless millions and maybe worse even, their twisted society was ensuring that no trace of the cultures and civilizations they had conquered would remain. Cultural genocide, erasing the memory of the people they fed to the Yoke so their descendants would never remember how their ancestors had lived free and the accomplishments of murdered nations. Even the language spoken by their parents they would forget, replaced by the Domination's English, butchered and warped beyond recognition, a tongue as barbaric and ugly as the black soul of its practitioners. The Alliance refugees fully intended to carry that memory.

The _Barcelona_ had undocked from her mothership thirty hours ago, after her crew was fully awoken and briefed. She was carrying six additional passengers and now they were crammed inside the runabout's tight confines, strapped in zero-gee frames and clad in vacuum-rated Fleet suits.

Maneuvering from the _New America_'s geostationary orbit towards the alien platform holding position at the top of it's thousands-kilometers long stalk had taken the best part of the past thirty hours. It could have been done much faster - but nobody wanted to light a full-power antimatter exhaust plume in such relatively close proximity to the colony ship, thus the cruiser's bridge crew had taken their time and followed the plan drawn up by the _New America_'s command staff before their departure.

In addition, they didn't want to spook any defense protocols the huge construct might have in place. So, a slow approach it was. It also gave the away team ample time to digest the data accumulated so far.

That thing was huge. It was built of unknown materials. One of the probe had latched on the hull and done a surface analysis. Its results were puzzling and that was the understatement of the month : diamond didn't cut the unknown alloy, the sampling blade barely managed to scrape the surface and what it got was merely space grime deposited by particle winds and micrometeorite impacts.

And a rough-and-dirty calculation, based on the local star's characteristics, suggested the station/beanstalk had been collecting space dust for millennia. Hundreds of millennia.

This just didn't seem possible, and a more detailed analysis was sorely needed. And it was just the start.

The small craft shuddered as its mooring clamps were released and the small maneuvering thrusters puffed vapor, jolting it clear out of the cruiser's frame. Seconds ticked by as it drifted away and once a safe distance was attained it rotated in place to align its axis with the computed approach vector that would lead it to the station looming a hundred klicks away.

Behind the front-mounted hatch and docking apparatus, Flight Lt O'Hare reviewed the parameters displayed on the collapsible flat screen displays. Vector, thrust, engine parameters were all in the green and no additional input would be necessary until they reached the end of their outbound trip. A braking sequence was already programmed to bring the craft to a relative halt near the station's side, and then careful manual input would allow her to bring the runabout in the immediate vicinity of their target, a small section of wall tentatively identified as an entry hatch on the probes' downloaded imagery.

Satisfied, she squirmed a little in her front-mounted acceleration frame to make herself more comfortable and craned her neck around to look at her passengers. Like her they wore their helmets with the faceplate open, since the compartment was pressurized. She met the blue gaze of the team's commanding officer, seeking mere confirmation that everything was fine - so far. Of course, it was psychological, the repeater screens on the back of the acceleration frames showed the essential parameters of the craft. Nevertheless, they all had to be feeling a measure of apprehension. Who knew if some ancient defense system wouldn't flash-fry them all on the way ?

"We've got the final go-ahead from Mission Control, Colonel. Course is set and autonav is engaged. ETA two hours" she rattled off in her professional, bored-unflappable-pilot's voice.

"I can see that, Lieutnant. I'm sure we're going to be fine."

O'Hare nodded at the Colonel's bright eager smile. The other woman seemed to be filled with expectations, and that was understandable enough given her background. A brilliant physicist and engineer, she had been a key member of the team who had designed the colony ship's antimatter drive and among the _New America_'s passengers she was probably one of the most likely to make something of the alien systems.

The other members of the ad hoc team she didn't know as well, and she tried to discern a reaction on the next passenger's face. The man strapped at the scientist's right met Rosie's gaze with a stony stare of his own. White-streaked brown hair and grey eyes, hard-lined features, the kind of cold look that wouldn't seem out of place on a Draka's face, minus the eerie aura of amorality usually associated with the Snakes.

He had been introduced by Lafarge himself as a Major O'Neill during the mission briefing, without any mention of his past service record or technical specialty and O'Hare strongly suspected he was OSS. It would make sense and explain his relative familiarity with the General, an ex-OSS man himself.

Rosie's gaze then drifted beyond, down the middle narrow passage between the two rows of passenger frames, but she could barely glimpse the last two members of the entry team obscured as they were behind the two officers. They were Fleet Marines, with Space Recon badges on the sleeves of their armored space suits. Muscle and life insurance, albeit both had various technical skills as well as a matter of course since everyone on the New America had at least a degree, everyone save the young children anyway, and half the colonists had a doctorate, many owning more than one. Their weapons were slung in cargo nets overhead, securely strapped to prevent them from escaping in micro-gravity as were the rest of the team's impedimenta.

The main burn countdown reached zero on the displays and the runabout's rear engine came to life, cryogenic hydrogen and oxygen reacting inside its combustion chamber and the passengers felt themselves pushed gently against their restraining frames. The acceleration was low at first, then became stronger as the craft cleared _Barcelona_'s immediate perimeter and its engine reached full power without any risk of damaging panels and antennas on the cruiser's surface.

External cameras showed the receding hull behind, the looming mass of the alien station ahead and the spherical expanse of its anchoring planet below.

"Mission Control, Bravo-Three is on the way" O'Hare announced on the general frequency, using the runabout's registry code.

"Understood Bravo-Three" it was the General's firm, authoritative voice "we'll be following you. Good luck, Colonel. Lafarge out."

The transit was unremarkable. It wasn't anything the runabout's passengers hadn't experienced before, although this time the boredom was lifted by the particular nature of their destination and the requirements of their mission. Indeed the mass of pictures and readouts accumulated by the probes and the small spacecraft's external sensors were enough to keep the crew occupied, although the two Marines made a show of sitting as straight as they could and listening to upbeat music in the mercifully closed confines of their helmets.

O'Hare had soothing classical tunes playing in her ear as she shared her attention between routine monitoring of the runabout's systems and observation of the giant space station using the camera controls. As far as she knew, the pair of officers behind did the same, the Colonel visibly engrossed in her perscomp's display.

And there was no reaction to their approach, soething O'Hare found herself thankful for - fretting that a most likely "reaction" could well consist in a well-aimed disintegrator ray or similarly unpleasant phenomenon.

Right on schedule the small capsule did an about-turn, pointing its rear engine forward to prepare for the braking, and after a perfunctionary checklist the pilot gave the computer her go-ahead. A faint vibration and pressure built-up, sustained for exactly the same time as the initial boost, and the runabout ended in a relative hover a hundred meters from the metal cliff now blotting half the sky, seeming to stretch up, down and sideways to infinity - but it was an illusion. The details could now be made out with the naked eye from the handful of viewports, or without any magnification on the cameras.

Curving ridges and geometric shapes blended into larger motifs with fractal regularity, a mathematical harmony that was probably designed to be readily appreciated by any sentient species, or so Carter felt. At least the alien geometry resonated in the human mind in a way that was both soothing and majestic and familiar. Well, she mused, it seems that ancient aliens minds didn't fit with Lovecraft's depictions, although one had to be demented anyway to willingly choose emigration to Snakeland. No wonder he had imagined alien intelligence as something escaped from mad nightmares !

"There's our destination" she reached forward and pointed at the main viewscreen, catching O'Hare's attention. Set inside one of the smaller repeating motifs in a shallow recess was an opening of sorts, or at least something that looked like one, a two-panelled rectangular door made of the same material as the rest of the wall. Others like it were scattered on the surface, farther away, and this one seemed as good a place as any to try gaining access to the interior.

"Can you move us closer, L-T ?"

"Aye, Colonel Carter"

Short careful bursts from the maneuvering thrusters brought the capsule close enough to touch the station's hull under manual control, the female pilot half-consciously trying to minimize the amount of burnt propellants she was spewing in such close proximity to the unknown titanic construct, even though she mentally scolded her apprehension. After all, the station had been hanging in space for thousands of years, and had likely withstood much worse than a few puffs of chemical smoke.

"Mission Control, Bravo Three is on-station next to the designated access. We're ready to EVA"

"Bravo-Three, understood. Knock at the door whenever you're ready, Mission Control out"

"LT, please depressurize, everyone, check your seals."

"Crew compartment depressurized"

The firve crews were now in vacuum inside the small craft, its atmosphere pumped back into the air tanks at the back. They could have simply vented out, but there was no need to waste.

Familiar sensations. Muted vibrations conducted from the spaceframe through the suits, nothing audible save the mens' own breathing and faint machinery noises from their built-in life-support systems, and the filtered voices coming through the radios.

In total silence, the front-mounted main hatch irised open, revealing the opposite door to direct eyeball observation, a scant two meters away from the motionless runabout's nose. Two meters of space separating man from his greatest discovery to date, O'Hare thought, as the pair of Marines floated ahead, first to exit the relative safety of the flimsy aluminium walls into the void. The pair moved with trained precision, pushing themselves towards the alien wall - or floor, or ceiling, in zero gee such distinctions were eminently relative - in a bracketing pattern, one each side of the putative doorway. Each trailed a thin line, one end fastened securely to their transport, and they made contact.

Nothing happened as human hands touched the station for the first time in millenia.

"It's safe, I think - no measurable change in emissions" Carter declared, eyeing the sensor take on her perscomp.

"Open Sesame !"

The Colonel arched an eyebrow, the effect throughly missed under the reflective visor of her helmet. Nevertheless, the OSS officer felt his superior's stare on him.

"Well, I had to try it" he shrugged, the motion less than noticeable under the spacesuit.

"Would have been too easy."

Thousands of kilometers away, Lafarge snorted. Typical O'Neill, making contact with mankind's greatest discovery and finding a fitting wisecrack.

"Anyway, we'd have a better chance trying this" Carter pointed to a recess on the right side of the door. Right side, that is, with the dome being the "up" direction. Inside the recess was a lever sized for a human hand, currently flat against its cradle. As if to reinforce the logical conclusion, there were indications in alien script, blocky shapes that had to be letters or symbols. It didn't take much imagination to deduce the writings meant something akin to "Open-Close".

O'Neill removed a sticky pad from a container on his suit. Whoever the station's builders were, their thoughtfulness hadn't apparently extended to providing handholds for zero-gee work. If he tried to pull the lever without anchoring himself he would accomplish nothing but swing his own body around. The sticky pad was nothing but a handle with a flat adhesive surface on one side. Although very simple in idea, designing an adhesive that worked in vacuum and extreme temperatures on any surface was a remarkable achievement in itself.

He peeled the protective film and applied the sticky face to the unknown material, counterbalancing his push with a burst of his suit thrusters. A light pressure was all it took normally for the pad to take hold. He allowed the glue to consolidate for the recommended fifteen seconds, then gave a firm tug. It held, and he addressed a mental blessing to the engineers who had invented the space adhesive.

Thus anchored, O'Neill managed to pull the recessed lever. The mechanism yielded smoothly and without a hitch like a well-oiled one, belying the fact that it had been exposed to space for an insanely long time, and the explorers were rewarded by the panels silently parting away to reveal a dark chamber beyond. A second later, the darkness was banished as interior lights came on. It was evidently an airlock, with another set of doors on the far wall, about four meters deep, enough to hold all five me and women of the exploration crew.

More of the alien lettering around the far door controls. More elaborate than a simple metal lever : instead backlit crystalline buttons and a small screen coming alive with schematics.

It was the only adornment in an otherwise bare naked room. The walls were smooth here with a metallic bronze sheen, only broken by flush-mounted light fixtures emitting a warm glow and scattered thin gratings.

It didn't look dangerous. Nevertheless the Major's gloved hand prevented Colonel Carter from moving beyond the threshold as she intended to, even as the pair of Marines left their flanking overwatch and repeated their "in first go the expendables" routine.

No deadly trap activated as the two men crossed the threshold. No hidden rayguns, no impaling spikes, no cooking hard radiation.

The sudden and unpredictable artificial gravity field did elicit a pair of surprised exclamations though as the spacemen entered the chamber and found themselves falling towards the floor. Fortunately, they were already in the correct orientation and their surprise didn't prevent them from landing on their feet, not particularly gracefully but safely.

They made a few tentative steps under the gaze of their superior officers, gauging the strength of the local gravity as well as checking their suit reading.

Their report was laconic enough.

"Sir, Ma'am, it feels and reads like one gee"

It was enough to make the Navy scientist giddy and she didn't wait to share her sentiment on the circuit.

"Carter to Mission Control, there's artificial gravity inside the station ! It's amazing ! We're in some sort of airlock, and the systems appear powered and functional. I think we might be able to use it and enter the station proper"

The reply from the _New America_'s bridge came a second later.

"Understood Colonel. If you think you can do this, then by all means try, but be careful. If you close the external doors you may be cut from communication, so think about that before going further."

It was a good point, Carter reflected. There was no knowing if the alien material would allow radio waves through.

"L-T, you're going to stay outside. I'll try to operate the controls and close the external doors. If five minutes pass and either they don't open again or we're cut from radio contact, try using the manual release" she pointed to the handle O'Neill had used.

"And if it doesn't work, well, use your judgment or defer to Mission Control's orders."

"Aye, Ma'am."

Actually, staying outside of a potential trap very much appealed to Rosie O'Hare. She had no intention of becoming a dead hero.

The buttons had to follow a logical order, Carter reflected as she gazed at the inner lock controls. And so she pressed the first one. The small luminous glyph inscribed on the crystalline surface was perfectly arcane, but its meaning became clear a fraction of a second later, when the outer doors closed, trapping the four-man party inside the airlock.

The radio came alive almost immediately after, with O'Hare's voice calling.

"Colonel, the, uh, doors just closed !"

_Thanks for telling me, Lieutnant Obvious,_ the physicist rolled her eyes. At least they could communicate through the exotic metal without substantial signal attenuation. It was one less concern for the expedition.

"I'm aware of that, L-T. Keep in contact, I'm going to see if I can pressurize and open the inner doors."

The next button did nothing. At least it seemed so, until the environmental sensors aboard the spacesuits started to pick up a change in their surroundigs. The omnipresent vacuum was receding - gas was pouring out of the gratings.

"I guess the builders of this station really were logical" one of the Marines offered a comment, the first one since they'd left.

O'Neill and Carter nodded.

"So far so good"

"Pressure rising steadily" Carter added as a running commentary, mostly for Mission Control's benefit, although their suit telemetry was transmitting everything back to the mothership. "Almost pure nitrogen though. No oxygen in the mix. Traces of argon and helium"

"Makes sense, somehow. Oxygen's corrosive, nitrogen's not. If I were the builders of this station and wanted to leave it mothballed I'd pump it full of non-reactive gas too"

"Pressure's stable at 1020 Hpa. Earth-like"

"Okay… one button left to push"

Restraining the trepidation she was feeling, the scientist activated the last control, praying the mysterious alien mechanisms wouldn't betray her.

The didn't. There was a noise of locks disengaging, then the two panels slid aside with a hiss that was perfectly audible in the new atmosphere.

The first meters of a corridor were visible in the light coming from the airlock. After that it was pure blackness.

"Okaaaaay, not what I expected" Carter dropped, disappointment coloring her voice.

One of the Fleet Marines took a step forward and craned his neck, swiveling his head from side to side as if to listen better, then swept the darkness with the flashlight attached under the barrel of his flechette rifle and peered down the sight.

"Got anything, soldier ?" O'Neill was tense, hand on the butt of his holstered pistol, a heavy duty thing designed to punch through Draka space armor at close-range.

"No Sir. Nothing moving, as far as I can see it's just a corridor. No weird alien monster with dripping fangs… and if it were invisible I'd still get a radar and sonar return to shoot it"

The officers ignored the faint snickers coming from the other Marine. Besides, the humor wasn't unwelcome and took away some of the tension hovering around the team.

"Well, you go ahead Marine. If you get eaten by a space monster, we'll try to kill it before it dies of food poisoning."

"Works for me Sir."

As it happened, there was no hidden space monster hidden behind the narrow gratings adorning the corridor walls, and no surprise spung from the next set of air-tight doors. The metallic surfaces were smooth and unadorned save for scattered indications in the blocky letters which had to constitute the station builders' alphabet, and those were probably direction signs from their placement and repetitive nature. One set was repeated at regular intervals, following the general direction of the corridor towards the center of the vast construction. Others were set at intersections or above panels that were perhaps maintenance accessways. All in all the facility, what little was seen, was fitting with the logic expected from a technological civilization.

Still, everything was powered down, the only active mechanisms so far had been the airlock controls, which were probably operating on a standalone power source, but Carter was persuaded that more of the station's systems were still under power. The internal temperature sat at a few degrees above zero celsius, which was unlikely unless some form of environmental control was active. And there was the issue of gravity, uniformly stable at one Earth gravity… which was a remarkable coincidence in itself.

"So, what do you think the local denizens looked like ?" O'Neill asked Carter. But the question was clearly one every member of the expedition had in mind.

The blonde female switched her attention away from her perscomp screen.

"Close enough to us. The way they designed their controls, the gravity we're under, the air pressure, the size of things - I'd say humanoid, bipedal oxygen breathers."

"Maybe we'll find some of them, frozen just like we were ?"

"Now that would be another can of worms."

The team had moved inwards for a little over two hundred meters, through an additional two sets of doors. Those were a different design from the airlock's, with a locking mechanism in the middle that looked very much like a windstar compass with more of the alien script around the circumference. Some fumbling had been needed but the Marines had found how to operate it manually after a few minutes of experimentation. The locks were evidently meant to be powered, but they'd been (sensibly) designed with a fallback mode as well. Rotating the star-shaped rings disengaged the internal locking bars, cracking the panels open and allowing one to pull them apart with sheer muscle power.

Following the main corridor the explorers eventually reached a larger space, and made their first notable discovery.

The room they entered was much longer than it was wide in the illumination provided by their suit-mounted lights, its length perpendicular to to axis they had followed. The foursome spread out slightly, playing the beams of their searchlights across the darkness. They were standing on a platform running the length of the room. Another twin platform faced them across a four-meter wide chasm. Stepping closer, O'Neill made out what laid at the bottom of the trench, and signalled Carter with a hand. Moving up to his side, the scientist got a mental jolt of excitation at the sight.

"So, Colonel - are you seeing the same thing as me ?" the grey-haired Major asked in a level tone.

His fellow officer stared down, then aside, following the linear shapes on the trench floor where they vanished away in darkness.

Her mind digested the sight, and then she answered.

"Nothing looks more like a pair of maglev tracks than... a pair of maglev tracks" She felt herself grinning with irrepressible glee. "And I'm willing to bet those tracks go all the way around the periphery of the station

O'Neill completed her thoughts.

"I think we just found the local subway." He sighed. "Some things are the same everywhere in the universe, it seems."

**General Frederick Lafarge's personal diary**

**Date of entry 5****th**** November 2010 (Earth reckoning)**

Following the success of Colonel Carter's mission, I have sent five more teams down to the station. They have cracked open three more external locks in the process.

What they have found so far confirms the preliminary observations : there is a maglev ring with boarding stations at regular intervals. Like the rest, it is unpowered and inactive. So far all the rooms and spaces our teams were able to explore showed the same state.

Colonel Carter speculates that a control room must exist somewhere, which makes sense, but we haven't found it so far. None of the rooms the teams have managed to explore so far contain anything looking like like it in any case.

Of course, this station's a huge place and we've only barely scratched the surface. We'll be sending more teams as fast as we can thaw the men out. As long as the station remained in its current low-powered state, my staff is confident the teams aren't too much at risk, and I agree : unpowered mechanisms cannot harm them unwittingly.

We have to determine whether this station can be rendered habitable and safe, and whether it can sustain the whole population of the _New America._

If not, we'll be in trouble. None of the planets in this system are inhabitable, the closest star system is three LY away and we cannot determine if it contains life-supporting planets with shipborne instruments.

Despite all this, I'm remaining confident. Confident in the skill and ingenuity of the _New America_'s crew. And also, confident that whoever sent us here did so in the knowledge that we could make the best out of the opportunity.

**Samothrace System**

**December 6****th****, 2010**

"Colonel, evacuation is complete. All personnel have left the station, your team is the only one remaining on board. Airlocks have been sealed and the _Barcelona_'s moving away right now. Will notify when she's safely out of sight, over"

"Understood General. I'm waiting for your go ahead.**" **Samantha Carter sounded cooler than she felt, butterflies were furballing inside her stomach and her impatience was killing her as much as she dreaded a catastrophic outcome.

Soon would come the culmination of a month of effort by hundreds of Alliance men and women. Since the day her team had cracked open the antique station, exploration by teams moving through the maze of passages and corridors inside the titanic construct had barely scratched a percent of its total volume. But logic and persistence had driven them straight to the station's heart, following the neat clear route provided by the maglev transit system. The entry team had discovered the outermost ring first, and further exploration had uncovered a junction station where it connected to a radial line heading to the center. Subsequent efforts had focused on following the neatly laid-out axis of penetration, only pausing to crack open the massive pressure doors sealing the tunnel at regular intervals, a safety feature undoubtedly part of the mothballing scheme that had left the facility intact throughout the passing millennia.

At the same time, the Alliance crew had taken every opportunity to increase their understanding of the builders' logic, codes and language. Every inscription was photographed, tagged and catalogued, maps were drawn, conjectures raised. Each small discovery raised new questions in turn.

Aboard the mothership, a transcription effort was underway using the data gathered by the explorers. The _New America_ project had started its life as a hard science endeavor - a thing of physicists, mathematicians and engineers, shrouded in the deepest secret. Although it had grown to encompass more personnel and more disciplines as it crept closer to its ultimate goal, the criteria governing the recruitment and gathering of intelligences had still continued to lean heavily to the hard science area. In short, the colony ship had departed a Draka-dominated Solar System, it was filled with engineers of all stripes, from nuclear power generation to environmental systems and tailored ecologies, with a sprinkling of military personnel who were more often than not specialized in relevant technical fields.

There was a comparative dearth of people with a significant background in Humanities and social sciences. Not that there weren't - enough wives had a degree in, say, History or Literature, gained before they married, had children, and moved out to the Asteroid Belt.

There were also a few generalist teachers to look after the young ones.

But there was no such thing as a Ph.D in Linguistics aboard.

To be fair, the initial plan hadn't call for one, and the databanks contained most of the relevant knowledge in electronic form, readily available whenever the not-fledging-anymore colony could spare the effort for such intellectual luxury.

Therefore, the Rosetta team, as they'd taken to calling themselves with a hefty amount of self-derision, was composed of an OSS code-breaker, a Fleet Signal Intelligence specialist, and a Navy commander's wife who happened to speak seven languages in addition to Latin and Greek and served as a language teacher before the Exodus for the Project's youth.

Together, Lefarge hoped, they would combine analytical skills and flair for languages to make sense of the unknown alien speech.

So far, they'd managed to confirm the builders' tongue was alphabet-based with a numerical system similar to their own, and had started to classify words into families. They were also making educated guesses on grammar, and their current theory pointed to a system of declinations similar to Latin, in principle at least.

It was a start and the more data was made available, the more they could refine their conclusions.

Otherwise the original denizens of the station had stayed as much a mystery as before, albeit shrouded in a strange veil of familiarity. No picture of them had been found. The explored spaces were devoid of representations, the only adornments appearing to be abstract motifs echoing those on the vast exterior hull. Blank walls dominated throughout, even in the areas that were assumed to have been public, deeper inside the station, as opposed to the area close to the exterior which was now assumed to be little-used maintenance and support access for the dark inactive machinery sitting silent and enigmatic, their unfamiliar shapes providing no clue to their function.

Other areas had seemed a lot more familiar in layout and function when teams had branched out from the maglev stations to explore their immediate surroundings. Once the surprise had worn off from suddenly stepping into wide open areas as opposed to the closed confines of corridors and maglev tunnels the explorers had found what were undeniably habitation quarters, wide curving "streets" overlooked by apartment balconies and gossamer metal platforms and adornments whose function could only be guessed.

Opening some of the doors had revealed spacious living rooms and perfectly preserved, if sparse, furniture whose form and function was immediately understandable and leant even more credence to the theory that whoever the facility's builders were, they had a lot in common with humans.

But all was clinically sterile and impersonal. Not a single thing that might look like a piece of personal belonging, not a living microbe on the dustless surfaces. The ornamental flower gardens were filled with cold and sterile dust, soil long gone to powder along with the remnants of the plantlife they had been holding whenever the place was last inhabited. Fossilized stems and leaves that crumbled to nothingness under the touch of a warm glove. Ashes and ghosts everywhere. Not even a ghost town. It was as if the inhabitants had dutifully packed away every last trace of their presence and allowed the place to enter a state of eternal limbo. Which was exactly what must have happened as far as the explorers could guess. Everything pointed to an orderly, unhurried evacuation intended to preserve the possibility of returning one day.

Eventually they had reached the central region of the huge station, past the line's terminus. By then the translation team had been confident enough in their nascent grasp of the alien language that they had pinpointed a particular letter configuration as linked to the concept of control and command, almost a hunch, but Carter's team had doggedly followed the hunch past closed doors and rappelled down pitch black vertical elevator shafts several levels down, even closer to the central axis.

And they had reached a last set of massive doors sealed shut and no manual emergency control had been visible. But it hadn't mattered. Long dormant systems had sensed the first Marine approaching the gate and blue-white ambient light had come alive in the access corridor. Unbeknownst to them, the four humans were scanned by biosensors hidden behind the walls, sensors advanced enough that even vacuum hardsuits wouldn't have blocked their keen sight. The lighter ship-duty uniforms and oxygen mask every team had taken to using instead of the bulkier spacesuits inside the station were no concealment to the ancient scanners.

As those relayed their findings to the eon-old custodian system, the crystalline processor nodes recognized their long wait as over, for the beings they'd waited for with infinite patience had finally returned. Or at least, beings whose structure, layout and pathways were sufficiently similar that they shared a direct lineage from the beings who had first designed and programmed them.

And so the machine custodian did what it was built for. It opened the gates before the putative reclaimers. The next and final step would be theirs to take.

It all had been an hour ago. The thick armored panels had swivelled out in silence, preceded by a musical chime, and the team had stepped through in the hope that their expectations would be met at last. They found themselves in a wide spherical chamber, four stepped levels arrayed from the equator down, each sporting workstations - a molded seat and a set of controls of sorts - all dark and unpowered ; the central area empty under a glittering crystalline protrusion that screamed _holographic projector_ to Carter - opposite the entrance, a jutting platform held another seat, throne-like in its bare metallic sheen.

It all seemed so logical, so recognizable as something humans with such a technological mastery would create that Carter's imagination immediately pictured the "control center" in livelier days, ranks of… _people_, she couldn't imagine them otherwise, manning those stations under the watchful and serene gaze of the being sitting on the lone chair, monitoring the myriad data such a place would generate - grand dreams of resurrecting that picture except with the men and women of the Alliance as operators. A shiver of excitation, hope and awe had run along her spine and she could feel her companions shared a measure of her awe. They were simply better at hiding it.

Although Major O'Neill did voice a part of his feelings.

"I wonder if the people who ran this place had big honking guns too ? Because I'd have some if I were them… oh yes" he trailed down as his gaze swept the room from one end to another.

"Maybe they were the peaceful, pacifistic, 'diplomacy can solve everything' types ?" one of the Marines snickered.

O'Neill made a spitting sound. "Not in the kind of universe that spawned the fucking Snakes, son."

Nods answered him from the two soldiers. Mere mention of the Drakas always seemed to drop the atmosphere's temperature by a few degrees - that or inflame it altogether.

"Well Sir, I hope we find out whatever technology's hidden in those walls and use it one day to kick the Snakes' slimy butts."

"Amen to that. Even if I'm long dead when it happens."

Further talk of the arch-enemy was interrupted by Carter's cry and the soldiers pivoted with trained instinct to the source of the sound, weapons ready to blast any threat to their charge with an alacrity that was as much the result of training as deeply-ingrained male instinct to protect the females of the tribe. But there was no danger. Only surprise and wonderment as they registered what had caused the scientist to sound off.

Set in the wall section behind the command chair was a square panel, its rim glowing a thin pulsing blue line. Inside the smooth dark grey slab was the embossed imprint of a hand. A thumbed, five fingered hand, its slightly oversized shaped providing an invitation to press a live one on its surface and see what would happen.

Which was exactly what Carter tried to do, until O'Neill's caught up with her and prevented her from proceeding with her idea.

"Ma'am, I think we should consult with the General before trying anything… reckless"

She froze, processed the suggestion and sensibly pulled her arm back from the waiting panel.

"I… yes, you're right. It might be dangerous. Better take precautions."

"So that's it General" she finished explaining to the command staff aboard the colony ship. The radio link was crisp and clear thanks to the relays installed along the axis of exploration, bringing out every pause and every inflection faithfully. "It's our best bet. Everything so far has appeared logical enough. This has to be it - the control room we were looking for, and the panel just has to be a switch, I'd bet my life on it."

The General's voice came back seconds later, heavy and brooding, weighing the pros and cons as he set to take a decision that might seal the fate of the entire expedition.

"You make a convincing argument Colonel and, personally, I think you're right - or I'm hoping for it. And there's something else too you should know - Commander Galloway has completed his astrometrics survey and his conclusions are… well I'll let him explain the highlights to you Colonel Carter."

"Colonel, Major, I don't want to weight on your decision" the starship commander began with as much levity as he could muster to ease the finality of his message "but as you know I've been tasked with surveying the region of space we find ourselves in the middle of. I have compiled hundreds of hours of instrument time and cross-checked my conclusions with my fellows. I'll forward the detailed data to you Colonelbut in short, the system we're currently in sits in a very energetic region of space due to its proximity with the galactic core. We have a very hot nebula corewards, containing several supernova residues, black holes and even neutron stars in the vicinity - all mere lightyears from our position. The local star's own particle wind creates a bubble of relative safety, but if we were to cross the heliosphere to reach one of the surrounding systems… even the New America's radiation and particle shielding would be overwhelmed. The crew would experience irreversible cellular degradation even in cold sleep. We'd be all dead on arrival."

He paused to let the facts sink in then resumed.

"Basically, we're stuck here. We can't leave the system - not with the ships we have anyway. So you better succeed at reactivating this station… hoping it is indeed supportive of human life. Because even here we're taking four times the ambient level of stellar radiation we'd be taking in the Solar System."

"Thanks Commander. I really feel better now" Carter let a smile audible enough on the link color her tart reply.

"For all our sakes Colonel, for all our sakes."

"_Understood General. I'm waiting for your go ahead.__**"**_

It was four more hours before every member of the colony save Carter's team was safely out of sight, aboard one of the ships holding orbit on the other side of the planet where they would be shielded from any… complication. Hopefully.

"Every man and ship accounted for, you are clear to proceed Colonel. Whenever you're ready."

"I'm as ready as I can be General. See you a in a moment, over." she finished on an optimistic tone.

With an intake of breath, she pressed her ungloved right hand on the waiting imprint. An instant of nothing, then - light, glowing through the flesh of her hand for an instant, just before it was eclipsed by every workstation lighting up along with the ceiling-mounted projector. In the empty space at the middle of the chamber a vast three-dimensional display flickered to life, showing the station's outline, its connecting stem and the planet below and the surrounding star system in multicolored glory, the sheer scope breathtaking, but nothing compared to the rest - all around the periphery of the chamber's curving walls a similar event happened, blank dark walls seemingly vanished to be replaced by a view of the exterior space as if the bulk of the construct had suddenly turned invisible.

Carter wasn't sure whether she imagined or actually felt the faint vibration of machinery coming to life deep inside the bowels of the station. But the hiss of rushing air was all too real and she glanced at her suit-mounted environmental display.

_Yes. _

The oxygen level was rising.

_Freedom Station_ was waking up from its long slumber.


	2. Chapter 1

And here's chapter one. It's heavy on exposition but it can't be helped : the colonists have to settle in their new abode. Next chapter will have more... stuff happening. Exploding stuff.

Also, I discovered another Draka fanfic on FF, a crossover with Mass Effect. It's quality crack and I can only encourage you to check it if you haven't already. The story's name is Emergence, look for it.

**Chapter 1**

**A New Hope (really)**

**Samothrace System**

**December 15****th****, 2010**

"General, welcome aboard _Freedom Station_ !"

Words, so ordinary, so banal. The event was anything but. Not were the people doing the welcoming ordinary by any measure, but even their career and accomplishments paled before the place he was setting foot in, past the Alliance-standard airlock assembly that protruded out of the access point, the very same one that had first allowed entry into the alien facility. While eminently functional and simple to operate, the size and layout of the pressure door frame were not compatible with the standardized airlock design implemented on every Alliance spaceship or station, which relied on a mechanical latch to ensure the tightness of the seal. Therefore and in order to avoid a bothersome spacewalk every time one wanted to enter or exit the giant floating building, a clear sleeve of heavy duty polymer was anchored around the exterior set of doors with space glue. It was ended on the other extremity by a lightweight lock assembly and a brace of girders provided the necessary rigidity. It had taken eight hours of work by a small team of zero-gee work specialists, but now shuttles and runabouts could directly transfer their passengers without the need for them to don vacsuits. In fact, the New America herself could technically latch one of its extensible access tubes on, but so far the leader of the expedition was content to let the colony ship hang in the planet's shadow.

Sooner or later, he reflected, it would come to that. The bulk of the crew was still frozen, but the prospects of them not remaining in that state for much longer were good. The reports from the exploration teams were positive enough. But they left many questions unanswered and he needed to see it all with his own eyes.

Well, maybe Colonel Carter would be able to answer some of those questions. He stepped forward and answered her salute formally, hand to temple, his legs straight enough despite the challenge of Earth-level gravity.

He let a few seconds pass before he added anything. The pull of gravity, the crisp air, fresh and pure as if he were standing on top of a glacier instead of being inside a giant pressurize metal can floating in space, the neutrally pleasant temperature, all the sensory input seemed to belie the fact that he was standing inside an artificial environment. Especially one that had been standing empty and unused for literally longer than recorded human history - although this last fact might come under scrutiny in light of the… history presented by the station.

"Colonel Carter" he said. "Congratulations on your work, first."

The blonde scientist made a self-deprecating gesture, smiling tightly.

"I'm not alone, and everything I did, a monkey could have done it really"

Her attempt at modesty was sabotaged by the man standing close to her side, who held himself in a more relaxed way, apparently not intimidated the slightest way by the presence of a four-star general in front of him. A general he knew well enough that his attitude wouldn't be misconstrued as a sign of disrespect.

"Gee, thanks Ma'am. Glad you value my skills"

The sarcastic remark was taken with good grace. After weeks of working together the scientist had gotten used to the soldier-spook's steel-cutting wit and self-deprecating remarks. And apparently Lefarge had some prior experience of it, too, as his amused snort showed.

The Marine guards remained stone-faced, doing their best to blend in the background and look like fixtures until they were needed to kill something. They were the only ones still wearing full hardsuits, albeit with the facemask removed. In addition to their personal gear and weapons they also carried emergency survival equipment, first of all two inflatable survival bubbles in case of a decompression, fire or any other condition that could render the immediate surroundings uninhabitable. Those could keep up to four people alive and safe for 24 hours before rescue.

Beyond the open airlock was the same corridor first explored by Carter and her team, but its light fixtures were now operating, their radiance evidently subdued but enough to make out the details, or rather, the lack of details on the walls. Smooth grey metal with bronze reflections, a black polished floor that amazingly wasn't slippy despite its glass-like finish. Lefarge could see a number of side doors and hatches at various heights, all of them sporting stenciled labels in the ubiquitous ancient script.

One of the apertures was open as the group walked past and the General glimpsed a narrow room filled with colored piping and luminous… devices emitting a low hum that reminded him of a high voltage cabinet. Two engineers were inside, taking pictures and readings and absorbed enough by their task that they missed the passage of the officers entirely.

Carter commented. "We're trying to catalogue the station's systems, make sense of the various piping and wiring. It's… not easy."

"Why ?"

"Well, most of those things are totally unfamiliar. We're dealing with such a technological gap, we have almost no reference and most of the time we're simply making guesses, and not very educated guesses at that."

"That bad ?"

She nodded as she walked, her hands making gestures to put emphasis on her words.

"Oh, some things are self-explanatory, like the maglev system. Other things we get their function, but how they work might as well be magic." She called up an example from memory. "Like their life support systems. You see, we found one of the air recyclers easily by following a fresh air vent. Got sensor readings on both ends, CO2 going in, O2 coming out, filtered, clean and sterile. We managed to open the casing and thread thing sensors inside, expecting to see reactant tanks, filters, more piping, everything you'd expect from an air recycler"

"And ?" The General's eyes met hers as they continued walking side by side.

"And nothing of sorts. Well, piping yes. In fact the whole thing's apparently a pipe air goes through and… something happens to it, but it doesn't involve any chemical reaction, nothing visible."

"Some kind of ionic process ?"

Carter shook her head. "No… but something definitely happens. There are solid state devices all around the section of piping, with those crystalline logic controls we're finding everywhere. Somehow, those things manipulate matter directly at the atomic level, breaking and rearranging molecules on the go. How they're doing it… I haven't the faintest idea."

"It sounds a bit like our matter transmutation, Colonel"

"In a machine the size of a domestic fridge, Sir ? Atomic transmutation takes kilometer-sized particle accelerators as far as we know it. No, this is much, much more advanced."

It took them a few more minutes to reach the first maglev station, past airtight doors that now opened automatically before them and closed again after their passage.

Both Carter and O'Neill had a not-so-subtle "you're going to be impressed" air on their faces as the group neared the last set of doors, the ultimate separator between the maintenance zone and the public areas that began at the outer maglev ring.

And it was like stepping in another world.

No more drab metal walls. There was a sharp intake of breath and a muttered "Holy Mother of God" as the General took in the vista spread before his eyes. It was an illusion, it had to be, his intellect reacted, but the sight before him did not belong to the inside of a space station, even a gigantic one. He found himself standing on a platform, a narrow-looking one at that, at least in comparison with the sprawling panorama surrounding it.

The dark, dead walls and ceiling the first explorers had found under their flashlights were no more. Now the maglev trench and its parallel boarding platforms appeared to float in the air above a mountain range of snow-capped peaks, glacial valleys and green pine forests stretching from horizon to horizon under a clear blue sky dotted with puffy white clouds. It was an illusion, he repeated to himself, it had to be. He took a step closer to where the wall should be and extended a hand. His fingers met an invisible but unyielding surface, smooth as glass but devoid of any betraying reflection. He pulled back his fingers and looked closer, trying to discern something, smudge marks, anything to show there was something solid.

Nothing. A perfect illusion, his point of view changing as he moved sideways, his eyes abused by the artificial depth of field. His sight told him that he was indeed standing over those mountains, but he knew they were just a projection… weren't they ? He touched the screen again, amazement on his face, then turned back with a more collected look.

"Your reports weren't doing it justice, Colonel. This is… amazing. A perfect tridimensional surround display… this is far above our tri-D technology, even the cutting edge military version. If this is the start, where does it end ?"

"Honestly, I have no idea Sir. But you might want to take a look at the center" she said with a grin. She had gone through the same amazing process of discovery after power was restaured throughout the city-station. And while she had had more time to get used to the sights, she was far from jaded yet.

She watched as her commander followed her invitation, and made another "Oh !" face again. It might not look as dignified as an officer general ought to appear, but he had every excuse, and after all they were inside the greatest discovery of human history. Nobody could be held at fault for looking impressed. Besides, she thought with a sobering pang, they all could use some uplifting experiences. A decade may have passed in real terms, but for the cold sleepers the war and defeats were still a fresh open wound in memory.

In any case, the General had the same reaction towards the force field isolating the live maglev track as everyone else. He peered at the faint immaterial gold-hued screen, poked it tentatively then brought up his finger for examination. No pain and no harm done. The whole hand followed, flat on the slippery repulsive screen, moving it as if cleaning a window, trying to get a grip at how it behaved, rapped it with a closed fist and found it rebounding away.

"Might as well be magic."

"Heh, sufficiently advanced technology, as they say."

"Any idea how resilient it is ?"

O'Neill answered this. In a way. The Marines were expecting his gesture and didn't budge, Carter made a "not again, you barbarian" semi-scandalized face, and their commander's eyebrows shot up in alarm, then settled again when nothing catastrophic followed the little experiment.

An experiment that consisted in firing a pistol bullet straight at the forcefield, which reacted locally with a flashing ripple and nothing else, save a low clatter as the flattened bullet fell on the floor.

"That's… a little reckless even for you, O'Neill" Lefarge observed with a frown, to which a shrug answered.

"I tried punching and kicking it first. Figured it was safe."

Behind the tranquil-looking Major, the blonde physicist rolled her eyes.

The trigger-happy Major's demonstration, and any argument that may have followed, were interrupted by the timely arrival of a mag-train, its motion silent and smooth as only magnetic suspension and drive could be. Instantly recognizable as a mass transit instrument, two interlinked cars joined by a flexible connection, silver hulls and glass panels, the interior brightly illuminated. Sparse seating, no handle bars, the most glaring difference with an Earth-built tube. Either the ancient denizens had a great sense of balance or there was something else - the thing seemed to decelerate and presumably accelerate faster than a normal train.

Side doors slid open automatically and corresponding sections of the safety force field vanished to allow access, and the Earth-born leader stepped inside, leaving the station's immaculate vistas behind.

By comparison, the stark but soothing off-white surfaces of the car were rather pedestrian. The holographic displays hovering in the air below the roof were not. While they certainly fulfilled the same function as the printed ones back on Earth, namely displaying navigation and line information, the way they did it still induced wonderment.

A moment later the doors closed and the station started to move around the mag-cars. At least that was the illusion his abused senses presented Lefarge with. The car was moving - but it did so without the slightest felt sensation. There was none of the unbalancing acceleration one was accustomed to in Earth transports, nothing. It felt as if the train wasn't moving at all, yet it was picking up speed at a good rate.

"I understand now why there are no handles in this crate…" he said to no one in particular, though he was answered by his female guide.

"We were all surprised the first technology behind it must be -"

"Far above ours, I get it" amusement, patient sufferance and wonderment were all present in the General's tone. He was already resigned at the prospect of hearing that particular spiel a lot more. "At least we're evolved enough to know it's not magic or gods doing it like that movie with the primitive tribesman in the New York metro !"

The humorous reference to a pre-war blockbuster comedy sent a mental image of the little group wearing feathers and painted tribal markings and gaping at the magical moving metal chariot, and grins appeared over every face. Until the men got their mind invaded by the picture of Colonel Carter wearing nothing but a banana skirt and their deeply ingrained sense of propriety reasserted itself with a vengeance and a few barely concealed winces.

It wasn't the sort of thing a decent man contemplated about a lady and a superior officer to boot. Both Marines stamped on their imagination. The General thought of his wife. O'Neill allowed the charming image to linger in glorious detail before their arrival at the next station distracted his mind.

Oblivious to her companions' mental struggle, Carter resumed her running commentary.

"The average interval between stations on the ring lines amounts to roughly 800 meters and ten seconds of travel time -"

"_Ten seconds ?"_ the General's tone was one of mild shock. 'But that's an average speed of…"

The physicist answered before he could finish the calculation.

"288 kilometers per hour, yes. Average. Which means a higher peak speed and a rate of acceleration and deceleration that would be entirely unhealthy in any circumstance."

He let the facts soak in then almost blanched.

"Dear God, I hope these ancient mechanisms won't fail for lack of maintenance !"

"So do I, Sir. Logically the designers must have included failsafes and self-checking routines though."

Three more stations went past, each sporting a different view although all were mountains of sorts, of various sizes and shapes and color and times, showing autumnal red and gold or lively spring greens in addition to wintery whites. Forests, prairies and glaciers, all true to life and teeming with life too, at least moving specks that looked like birds and others scattered on the virtual grounds. There wasn't enough time for a close look.

"… and we've started to call it the Mountain Line since all the stops share that theme."

"What about the rest ?" Lefarge gestured to the closest holomap displaying the orbital city's spiderweb-like transportation network. The lines' geometry wasn't exactly regular - while the rings were more or less perfectly circular, the radials were neither straight nor evenly spaced and some sported side branches to fill out the wider exterior areas.

"All have a unique theme it seems, usually natural scenery -"

"I take it those sceneries are from… different planets ?"

Carter nodded affirmatively. "As far as I can see, yes. And in case you're wondering, Earth is among them"

Her little bombshell had the expected effect.

"_What ?_ Are you sure of that ?"

"I saw it myself Sir." O'Neill interjected "Inside one of the habitat sections. A big great holowall with old Earth as if viewed from high orbit. Except it's a really old view, with jungle instead of desert in the Sahara"

The General's eyes went to Carter as if to demand a confirmation. She provided it.

"As the Major says, Sir. Earth as it was millions of years ago."

"Too far to see any dinosaurs though." O'Neill added with a look of wistful regret.

"Now why didn't you report this before ?" the colony's commander added a moment later.

The reply came with a disarming smile from the blonde woman.

"I thought it warranted more than a dry electronic report Sir."

The radial line they switched to five minutes later was the aptly-nicknamed Volcano Line, with spectacular and sometimes frightfully close displays of raging geysers of lava and flowing rivers of molten rock under darkened skies ; black tormented plains of solidified magma in chaotic jagged piles or smooth-flowing paste ; and in places the display designers had added sound as well, roaring crashes and subterranean breaths filtered just enough to allow conversation and not deafen waiting passengers.

The variety and scope of the displays brought more questions, and answers whose scope defied human imagination.

"Just how many hours of recording does this represent now ?"

Carter took a breath before answering, as if to underline the magnitude of the answer.

"We're probably talking _years_ of recording for some scenes, with a level of detail that's simply frightening in order to create those perfect illusions. I don't know, assuming every holowall shows a different view… I guess it would take petabytes of data storage."

Lefarge whistled softly. "Petabytes of storage… just for their equivalent of wallpaper ? Just who were these people ?"

"People so advanced…" Carter began "… they make us look like chimps in comparison" O'Neill ended without missing a beat.

"I see I wasn't wrong putting you two on the same team."

Both officers grinned in unison.

As expected, "Earth Village" was a sight to see. Situated three stations from Volcano Line's innermost terminus, the self-contained habitat was as close to an outdoor environment as could be expected inside a gigantic metal can, starting with an access street off the maglev stop whose wallscreens mimicked lush gardens - a sensory experience enhanced by the fragrance of greenery and flowers distilled into the air and the chirping of birds over the rush of wind in branches and leaves. A thought flashed inside the General's mind. _The fucking Snakes would love this. _Then he consciously corrected himself. _We're not Snakes but it doesn't mean we can't enjoy beauty too - and we aren't hiding the ugliness of our character under pretty appearances either._ _And I'm certainly not going to let the bastards spoil this, even through their mere memory._

The entry way opened mid-height into a wide circular atrium, extending vertically for a hundred meters up- and downwards in a terraced fashion, leaving the narrower bottom portion occupied by a small pond of clear water into which ran the small waterfalls running downwards from the top in zig-zagging patterns. Long dried and petrified arboreal skeletons also hinted at widespread greenery arrangements all around the levels.

"Whoever likes gardening will have their work cut out for them" Carter observed. "At least once Life Sciences checks it all out for suitability"

"We'll grow veggies first rather than ornamental plants then" Lefarge answered. "About that, any progress on the dome ?"

Carter shook her head in negation. "Access is still blocked, but we're getting hints that something's happening out there. Atmosphere's changing according to spectral measurements and the probes also caught movements on the surface, what might be machinery at work under the cloud layer. Unfortunately the dome's material's interfering with scans so we're mostly guessing. Me, I think the station's automated systems are restoring the dome's environment for human presence or something like that."

Her admission elicited a grinning smile from her commander.

"So what it takes is a millions year old alien space station to reduce our genius scientist to guesses and vague conjectures." He was rewarded by Carter's sheepish face.

"Anyway Sir, should you want to look straight up… " she bounced back, moving toward the edge of the platform they were standing on, and the General followed her. Craning his neck he caught the object of interest at once - filling what passed as the atrium's ceiling was a football stadium sized holowall displaying Earth in all the home planet's glory, pristine and untouched by Man's hand. The continents were instantly recognizable with the tip of South America and a green Antarctica that clearly drove home the notion that this Earth was from a long, long ago past.

The vision threatened to bring along a wave of longing and nostalgia which he fought back dutifully, staring at the blue, white and green colors of mankind's cradle hovering above and looking as real as the real thing. Yes, Earth was a jewel, but a jewel presently sullied and polluted by the cancerous Domination. The worst thing was knowing there still had to be free men and women fighting against the Yoke, with no hope beyond hurting the Snakes enough before the Redoubts died out.

He was mercifully pulled away from those depressing thoughts by the Colonel's resumed account of things delivered in a continually "wow isn't it amazing ?" tone.

"…all checks out. Life support's all good, the New America's crew could move in the station tomorrow with room to spare, see Earth Village alone can hold two thousand easily and it's just one of the ninety or so similar habitation quarters indicated on the station's schematics, not even including the actual dome which could conceivably hold a lot more and..."

"I get it, there's room for everyone. But can we trust this place to hold together for several lifetimes ? We don't have any control on its inner workings, what if tomorrow some alien computer decides we've overstayed its welcome ?"

The deflated look on Carter's face only lasted for a couple heartbeats. Clearly it was a possibility that had crossed her mind before, and her reply was as far from mathematical certainty as could be.

"Well… we have to have faith."

"Alleluia !" O'Neill kept his skepticism at a mutter. Yet loud enough to be heard.

"Major ? You have a suggestion ?"

He nodded emphatically.

"Yes Sir. We find that central computer, strap a nuke on it and blackmail it in case it goes all uppity on us meatbags !" he delivered in a deadpan tone.

"Riiight. Bringing a nuke aboard's the last thing I'd do lest the station feels threatened, Major."

"Just keeping options open."

"… And that's the 'Knowledge Room' as we call it."

"I see"

Another trip trough the maglev system had brought the group to another highlight. One of the most promising ones, too judging by the activity inside. While most areas they had visited so far were largely devoid of human presence, the core sector was understandably at the heart of the exploration effort and the present room laid a mere two levels and one section from the Control Center. A faceted circle in horizontal layout with a tall domed ceiling, the sides were filled with display terminals set in the walls, the absence of depth a notable change from the omnipresent holowalls. The controls were highly reminiscent of the workstations in the Control Center, and all were currently occupied by a _New America_ crewmember tinkering and taking notes of the changes each input created.

But the truly spectacular sight was taking the entire center of the room. Another volumetric hologram generated by a central pedestal, the controls for which were operated by a small man with Asian features. The name tag on his chest was superfluous.

"Doctor Nagami" Lefarge called, simultaneously gesturing for everyone to stand down from attention and resume their work.

"General" the man replied, bowing as was his cultural custom, rooted in old Japan and kept faithfully alive by the New Edo colonists on Luna. "Your presence here honors us."

"I had to see it for myself, Doctor" a nod answering the bow "How's your work progressing ?" he pointed at the arcane light sculpture filling the empty space.

"Ah, allow me to show you General" the Japanese-accented computer expert put his hands back on the control surface. "Let's begin with…" he fiddled a short instant and the hologram reconfigured in the blink of an eye.

"Do you recognize those ?" he pointed at one of the multicolored clumps orbiting silently over their heads.

Lefarge peered in. It looked like a planet and a moon doing circles around it. The other shapes were similar albeit with more spheres… Realization struck at once.

"Hydrogen"

"Indeed General." Nagami was practically beaming. "And every element besides, including a few superheavy ones we never managed to create in high energy physics experiments" he pointed to a complicated and large atom floating amidst the others. Without waiting for a comment the doctor changed the display again, focusing on a single element.

"Hydrogen, the simplest of all" The hugely magnified atom was now flanked by placards of text in alien script. "With all the relevant data, although we haven't entirely cracked yet what is what."

"But that's not all !" the exclamation was followed by yet another reordering of the holo. Figures and more text. Basic geometry, Lefarge understood. Areas and volumes with formulas. More complex shapes and increasingly arcane high level geometries.

"Like a textbook" he commented.

"Yes, yes ! All laid out in logical fashion once you understand how the interface works. Took a lot of trial and error, but safe."

Another switch.

"Galaxy map !"

That was obvious enough. The Milky Way in detailed volumetric glory, illuminating the room with golden light.

"I can zoom in !"

A sector of the cosmos expanded. Individual clusters became visible, then single stars, then a star system. "The Solar System !" The enthusiastic doctor wasn't leaving his visitor any time to speak first. But then Lefarge was content enough just looking at the show for now. The view was understandably not entirely at scale - the Sun in the center and the planets in orbit were much larger for the sake of facilitated vision.

Cartouches of text sided each celestial body, but there was something else to the now familiar alien characters near Earth. A set of unknown symbols, seven of them.

"What are those ?" Lefarge pointed at the strange cartouche.

Nagami made a minute shrug.

"I don't know General. I found similar inscriptions next to planets in other star system, but there are so many of those I'm afraid I have only scratched the surface."

"Only planets ?"

"Indeed General. Planets and moons of size and composition similar to Earth."

"Interesting."

**Freedom Station, Samothrace System**

**December 23****th****, 2010**

It wasn't Earth Village, but it was otherwise similar in design. This habitat was closer from the core, and Lefarge had selected it as much for the proximity with the station's most crucial systems as for the fact that its ceiling did not sport a virtual recreation of Earth along with the sorrowful memories it evoked. Others hadn't shared this sensitivity and gladly moved in, but their commander had settled for more neutral quarters. The planet adorning the virtual sky was a gaseous giant reminiscent of Saturn with its spectacular and colorful rings and close orbiting moons and the display was truly vertigo-inducing if one gazed too long. Nobody knew where in the Universe this collection of orbital bodies laid or what its original name was, but it didn't matter. To its prospective denizens it was home.

Frederick Lefarge hadn't picked the apartments he was occupying - or rather sleeping in when he wasn't inspecting some part of the city-station or dealing with the myriad tasks involved in setting up a colony or shuttling back and forth to the _New America_.

The choice had been Marya's. His sister, who had spent longer than a decade under the Yoke, owned by one of the most prominent Snakes at that, and the cruel irony of fate had made it so that he, as an OSS agent escaping the Domination's boot falling over India, had unwittingly shot Yolande Ingolfsson's lover. A lover whose clone was borne in Marya's womb. The sister of the assassin bearing the dead one's unnatural progeny as well as the secret weapon that would have spelled the doom of adoptive mother and child… had it only remained a secret a little longer.

And Cindy, his own wife, pushed into abominable self-inflicted torture to save their children by a Yolande Ingolfsson acting out of vengeance against him, out there in the cold void between planets.

Yet both had lived, survived the Snake's bite, and were with him now. It had meant a lot to him in those dark days when the free Alliance had crumbled, but he hadn't escaped survivor's guilt either. He'd escaped with his family. Many others weren't so fortunate.

In any case, Marya had taken the outlandish news in stride after her thawing. Maybe she was inured to surprise after everything she'd experienced. Certainly she had a strong mind. Stronger than his, he believed. And she decided to scout out a new home for the family before Cindy and the kids were brought back to life in turn. So when the reunited Lefarges left the colony ship, Marya was there to greet them and guide them to a place they could call home.

And it certainly deserved the title, taking half the uppermost level of the habitat with vast patios and balconies overlooking the rest, right under the virtual sky. The kids had their own room to rest and experiment with the interactive wallscreen display on their free time. Their father had been leery of reviving them so early - Marya had found the words to persuade him. They were yound adults with extensive education. They could carry their weight on Freedom Station, she'd said. He knew that, of course. She only needed to overcome his fatherly anxiety.

And the girls were not dead weights, they'd volunteered on their first day for agricultural duty inside the Dome.

It was therefore with more than purely professional interest that the General turned to the woman sitting among the other assembled department heads in the improvised conference room. Grey-haired and willowy, dusky skin and regular features revealing her mixed Indian and South-American heritage, Doctor Isabel Prabhinder was the ship's foremost expert on Life Sciences and Biosphere Systems and the agricultural projects fell under her authority.

Feeding the colonists was the priority number one concern. The ship's stores wouldn't hold forever and the sooner they got crops going the better he would feel.

"Now that everyone's here, let's not waste time. Isabel" all the men and women inside the room were long acquaintances, and stood on a first-name basis in such a semi-private setting "let's hear you first."

The Doctor leant forward on the table even as her colleagues reclined in the ancient, but devilishly comfortable chairs, and spread her hands to bracket the flat perscomp laying before her. The touch screen was displaying the salient points of her expose, not that she actually needed the crutch.

"Well" she intoned, a faint trace of accent coloring her soprano "I'm pleased with the results so far. The microbial seeding is successful so far in very sample culture, so the first step towards tailoring an Earth-compatible ecosystem, even a simplified one, is done. As you know, when the Dome became accessible two weeks ago it was a sterile environment, albeit with all the chemical prerequisites to amino-based life and well-balanced soils. It also appears that the automatic reclamation process has included a mechanical component, with dredging of the waterways and fine ploughing of the flatlands. A good thing, that, after millennias the superficial layer must have become as compact as concrete and tough as the underlying rocky foundation."

"Did we find the machinery that did all this ?" Lefarge interjected.

"We didn't see anything moving when we finally entered, but we did find tracks and followed them. We found two very large gates in the rim, which must open to hangars of sorts, but we had no luck trying to open them. Anyway, the central island and the rim shores were utterly devoid of life, as were the sea and lakes. In a way that was disappointing, but we're getting the benefit of a blank slate we an tailor to our needs."

"How long then before we can eat fresh bread ?" the question brought hungry thoughts all around. Ship rations were palatable enough, but real food was something everyone looked forward to.

"Give me six months if all goes well. With a stable maintained climate we could get two grain crops per year although I'd recommend avoiding soil exhaustion. Fresh vegetables, earlier than that. Our fast-growing fruit trees should yield produce in a year hence. In short, I'm optimistic that we'll be able to feed ourselves long before the New America's reserves run out. That's assuming environmental conditions inside the Dome stay constant, and not taking into account the habitats and their culture beds."

"That's outstanding, Isabel. I hope it pans out, that would sure lift a huge burden off our shoulders."

After a breath, the General straightened on his seat and looked down the length of the table.

"Sam" he addressed the blonde woman who spearheaded the exploration and discovery aspect of things. As her name was called she leant forward and brushed away a strand of hair unconsciously. "How far along are you on the control systems ?"

"Making progress Sir" her military formatting stubbornly prevented her from addressing Lefarge by his first name "with the basic vocabulary translated, understanding what the various displays are all about became easier, but so far we're mostly making observations. I wouldn't dare change the settings on things like life support !"

"No need to" the General's frowned a little more than was normal and pinched his nose, the following subject being a teensy bit awkward "Did you find out how to modify those environment holos…?"

That mention made everyone around the table dip their head slightly and look elsewhere, a few judiciously raised hands concealing restrained smirks.

The question's recipient blushed in assaulted modesty. As the crewmen surveyed more sectors of the station, they had stumbled on places where the omnipresent holowalls were showing scenes considerably more risqué than volcanoes and exploding supernovae.

Eight days before the meeting an exploration team had called in to report a major discovery - no immediate danger, they'd told Carter on the radio, but it warranted attention by some higher-ups. So she had made her way down three levels, flanked by O'Neill who insisted on being protective, and across two mag-lines into a newly-opened inter-habitat passage and then happened upon the two-man team. She'd recognized the two Space Forcers and answered their nervous salute, and naturally asked what it was all about. She couldn't spot anything abnormal in the wide sinuous corridor. Given its location it probably wasn't a very busy one even at the height of the station's past occupancy, with a rather unsurprising if perfectly charming virtual scenery. A mid-sized clearing with forest on all sides, a small waterfall on her right was feeding a clear little pond with grassy banks and moss-covered polished rocks and sunlight playing a myriad reflection. There was the murmur of rushing water and the rustle of leaves in a light breeze and a pleasant chirping of birds, all in all a very welcoming place but hardly cause for her immediate presence.

"Ah, Ma'am…" the first crewman began, clearly at odds with the apparent serenity of the place "it's, well -" his partner cut him with a side look "Ma'am, we just saw people in there."

"People ?" Carter was unable to contain a rush of excitement. "In the holo ?"

Both men nodded.

"Where are they… what did they look like ?" she was looking in every direction, searching for a hint or trace of the apparitions.

The second crewman pointed at the waterfall. "They climbed on that rocky outcrop and disappeared behind it, about five minutes ago but we heard their voices again… Ah, and they looked human just like you and me Ma'am" he finally delivered the breaking news, leaving her momentarily speechless as the meaning of the words sank in.

"Human - but then - I mean," she spoke for herself as much as for her companions "it fits with everything else but…" he eyes were wide and she put her hand on her mouth prior to speaking again, leaving the hand cradling the side of her face "are you _sure_...?"

The crewman nodded, then froze instead of answering at once, shifting his head as if to listen better. Carter followed his example, focusing her ears in the same general direction, and she heard them. Voices, unmistakingly human-sounding even if the words didn't mean anything. Shouted words and exclamations of… joy, excitement ?

Her raised hand fell down along her side. Them. Hopping down to the level of the pool with agile steps, a small group of humanoids - entirely human-like in their exterior appearance, healthy-looking, well groomed state precluding the notion that they were prehistoric, cave-dwelling creatures - entered the water again with a flurry of splashes.

Men and women, good-looking, and naked.

"Oh my" was all the Colonel could say for a while.

After the initial shock, surprise and elation - the greatest discovery of human history, _again _- at finding confirmation that the original occupants of the station were indeed human-looking, more cases were spotted across the facility's organized maze of internal streets, public areas and even private housing units. They were mostly transient, whenever some of these beings found themselves in the scope of the scanning apparatus which had recorded the scenes, and in most cases fully clothed in a variety of styles and colors. Yet, in a few number of instances, but those balanced their scarcity with their unpredictability, the figures were naked. Which was awkward enough.

In one case though, the New America's crew witnessing the scene were subjected to a very passionate love-making session involving a teenage-looking couple in a flower-strewn meadow.

_Oh well, at least these people were straight,_ Lefarge had sighed when shown the helmet-camera recording. _But still, we can't allow kids to see this. Something has to be done._

**Freedom Station, Samothrace System**

**December 24****th****, 2010**

A sea of faces greeted Frederick Lefarge when he stepped through the door and walked on the stage up to the lectern. Finding this amphitheater a few days beforehand was a very timely occurrence, of course such a thing wasn't much of a surprise any more. The similarity between the _New America_'s colonists and the long-departed builders of the station went a long way towards explaining why things looked the way they were despite being made by aliens. Like the bathrooms. Or the cooking implements found in the homes, perfectly stacked in magnetic drawers without a single grain of dust. Drawers that also worked as washers thanks to some technological wizardry nobody had an understanding of.

About four thousand men and women were present, ranging from twenty-somethings to white-haired ones although the latter were not as prevalent. _New America_ was always meant to contain a majority of passengers in their breeding age. There weren't any children either, which made for a strange Christmas eve, but those were still deemed better in coldsleep while the adults made sure the new home was ready. And everyone knew that kids running around unknown and potentially dangerous surroundings were a recipe for disaster.

Skin tones spanned from milky to dark brown with a large helping of olive and caramel, representing the variety of people that used to form the Alliance. Men and women in roughly equal proportions. Little knots and groups, brought together by prior history and affinities. What lacked in variety was the clothing. All wore the issued utility suit, a sturdy, comfortable and protective garment meant for in-atmosphere duty. Providing isolation from temperature contrasts and protection from scrapes and cuts, fireproof and self-cleaning, the suits were intended to last decades - until the fledging colony could make new clothes.

Name patches, specialty badges and service colors were the only variations.

Every revived colonist was here save those on-duty aboard the ships. A retransmission was set up for them.

A rumble of applause started as the General took his place behind the lectern. It contained workstation controls linked to the vast wallscreen behind him, and Carter had managed to set a snowy forest scene as background, choosing from the built-in gallery.

The acclamation picked up as all four thousand crewmen joined in until the vast chamber resonated with rythmical clapping and Lefarge felt a knot forming in his throat in response, the repressed feelings and the weight of past events rushing to the surface. He caught Cindy and Marya in the front rank and met their eyes, finding quiet pride on his wife's features and contained assurance on his sister's.

He blinked once then twice, took a sharp breath, swept the assembly under his gaze and composed his face in a serene and voluntary facade. His arms rose in answer to the clamor, hands motioning to stop and listen - it took almost a minute for the applause to die down at last.

All were then silent and looking at his person. Waiting to hear his words. The first general address of a new era. Lefarge expected that future historians (if the colony survived long enough) would hail the coming speech as the founding one of a new society. He snorted inwardly. _I'll keep it short and to the point and do the schoolkids of two centuries hence a favor._

"My fellow colonists" he commenced. "Free men and women, escaped from the clutches of tyranny unprecedented in History. We all know how much we lost, how much the last war cost us. The Draka think they have won, that they're the uncontested masters of all Creation. No doubt they expect us to be dead after the New America disappeared from their scopes. Well, we are very much alive. More, a higher force took pity on us. An instrument of God's Will or the Providence, we don't know. Maybe whoever brought us all here shares a connection to the beings who created this place long ago. Their inheritance is ours now. Through their knowledge and our ingenuity we will build a new society and hold high the torch of Freedom unextinguished."

A few "Yeah !" and "Hear that, Snakes !" were shouted enthusiastically. Lefarge nodded and continued.

"We have found a shelter, a new home. It, and the wonders it contains are a gift, a marvelous gift. We have to show ourselved worthy of it. More importantly, we must not repeat the mistakes of the past. Never again shall we let the seed of oppression grow and fester. We owe this to our brothers and sisters left on Earth, we owe it to every last victim of the Draka, every last rebel impaled on a stake while our former countries sat in the distance, watching and doing nothing to crush the Snakes before it grew too strong. "

Murmurs and growls of "never again" rose up from the public. This lesson was well learnt among that crowd.

He went on after a good breath.

"We will survive. We will thrive. We will uncover the secrets hidden behind our mysterious displacement and its destination. And with God's help we will build an army, an army of Freedom to smash the Yoke and cleanse the universe of the Domination's stain !" he hammered out, punctuating his last sentence with a pumping of his fist on the lectern, face set strong and resolute.

The crowd's reaction was matching. As soon as he finished a rolling roar of approval drowned the chamber. Cries and shouts of revenge and curses against the Snakes mixed with more basic yells and stamping feet ; high fives and fraternal hugs and grinning faces, joyous faces. They were looking forward to success, to life, to justice brought in the universe. They were a people, his people and they had a mission.

As the clamor died out, the General concluded.

"Merry Christmas, my fellow Samothracians !"


	3. Chapter 2

_Well, here's the completed second chapter of SoI. As usual, there is violence (physical and psychological), sex and all that nasty stuff. _

_I'm using bolded text for the "Goa'uld distorted voice" just in case you'd be wondering..._

_Work on Chapter 3 is starting. I hope it's going to be epic. _

**Chapter 2**

**...The more it stays the same**

_**Now**_

"You will tell me what I want to know."

_Fat chance._

In O'Neill's mind was defiance and more than a generous helping of irritation with the infuriatingly gloating man… or creature in front of him. But to be fair, most of the anger was directed at himself for allowing his team to be captured.

His own stony face and grimy appearance contrasted with the immaculately groomed and richly clad individual standing with his arms crossed and a smug smirk. Even the thin black goatee seemed to be a deliberate statement of… evilness ? It sure sounded cliche, but this thing apparently made a point of playing every key on the "Look, I'm evil and powerful" keyboard.

"For your own good."

_Oh yeah ?_

Not that the Major could anything more than seethe inwardly. Not when he was unarmed, hands bound in iron and forced to kneel by the two hulking brutes flanking him, the burnished mail they were wearing adding to the theatrical setting. At least they fit in with the dark humid stone of the dungeon where they'd locked him before bringing him up for interrogation. The high ceiling of the present room was almost lost in the dark, the burning torches failing to illuminate more than a few meters above the floor of polished black marble. The place looked positively medieval, as if he'd been transported a thousand years back to the time when feudal lords laid siege around the crenellated castles of their enemies.

O'Neill glanced aside furtively. This was obviously the throne room, with a high chair of carved wood inlaid with gemstones on a raised dais in the back bracketed by two metal-studded doors that probably led to private apartments. Decoration consisted in various weaponry hung on the walls - swords and halberds and axes - interspersed between dark crimson velvet tapestries sporting gold-thread brocade. More of the chainmailed, tattooed guards stood motionless against the walls, their peculiar staff weapon held at the side. O'Neill held no illusion. Those weapons would be trained on him in a fraction of a second if he tried anything, and although Marine-issue armor might resist one or two blasts, armor would do no good when it had been stripped off during the time he'd stayed unconscious along with every piece of clothing. It was the most basic trick in the book and his OSS training made him immune to it, but his captors were certainly studying the uniforms as well, trying to get information out of them. Probably in vain, but who knew what those people were capable of. While the current setting looked medieval it didn't reflect their technological level - after all they did have starships and energy weapons, didn't they ?

And even though they looked human, the leader's unnaturally distorted, deep voice and glowing eyes made it clear that he was something else. Not a god as he pretended, but something powerful and dangerous nevertheless.

"You speak the tongue of an ancient race" the alien resumed in his infuriatingly calm and self-confident tone. "I very much want to know how you learnt them." He paused to brush some imaginary dust off the cuffs of his burgundy leather tunic. "And where. Where you come from. You will give me the address of your world."

The kneeling and bound prisoner remained mute, eyes fixed at a spot on the floor in front of him. It was obvious enough that he wouldn't submit willingly. Perhaps some incentive was to be offered.

"Answer my questions and you will spare your people as well as yourself. There is no harm in obeying your betters and I rule my subjects fairly."

The words made the prisoner bristle somehow.

_I'm a free man you smug bastard. You can take your Snake-ish idea of submitting and shove it up your ass._ The Terran officer remained silent. He'd give his captor no piece of data willingly. Keep silent, wait it out. Every hour gained can mean the difference between vital data and outdated data. Even the most innocuous-looking words can provide the enemy valuable information, so keep your mouth shut. Even subvocalization could betray you. Of course, the OSS course on resisting interrogation had been focused on the likely enemy - the Draka. But the fundamentals were no less valid in the current situation.

At least the Drakas' abilities were a know factor. What was this new adversary capable of ? The near-medieval appearances were an illusion. Medieval people didn't have starships and energy weapons and computers and automatic translators that somehow interfaced directly with the mind. The last alone was had worrying implication. What if the could directly read his mind ? But then why waste time questioning him ?

Seconds ticked by with only the faint crackling of torches. The haughty human-looking alien sighed theatrically and made a mockingly pained look, as if he were sorry for the situation.

"Your unwillingness to cooperate is regrettable. I'm afraid it will leave me only one recourse." A pause. The Goa'uld lord stared down at the man who refused even to reval his own name. He could sense the inner resolve. This was a warrior, a man who considered duty above everything else. Jaffas could show the same stubborness - but all of them eventually cracked under torture. Even if it took days, months, or years - an immortal being could usually afford to be patient, and the more time it took the more satisfying the inevitable outcome.

A human. A glance at his retrieved equipment had convinced the Goa'uld that his species' usual spiel would be useless. Some of his fellow System Lords had ended believing their own propaganda, convinced that they were actual gods. This brought an amused snort. Gods did not exist. Religion was a tool, a mean to control the masses and ensure their unthinking obedience. He was far above such delusions, but they could be useful and so he kept the pretense when suitable.

This one obviously came from a human society which had reached a scientific understanding of the universe. Impersonating a god would achieve nothing. Well, this left other methods. More entertaining ones at that.

Psychological torture was the most fascinating of all.

The leather-clad being turned aside. His eyes flashed gold at the Jaffa officer standing at the back, near the throne room's entrance.

"Jaffa ! Bring the female here."

The grizzled warrior bowed, thumped his chest and pivoted on his heel. His two fellows standing guard around the entrance pushed the twin gates of polished steel-reinforced timber aside, the well-oiled panels opening with a faint groan. The hallway beyond was barely illuminated, but it made no difference. The way to the dungeons was familiar enough.

O'Neill's knees were beginning to ache dully. The hard floor couldn't be called comfortable, and his joints weren't used to kneeling for more than a few minutes. Maybe he should have been going to Church more often, he reflected whimsically. He tried to move his shoulders and work out the kinks out of his neck, cracking a couple of pops in the process. Nothing more he could do with the two brutes watching him like hawks from the sides.

Yet as uncomfortable as the present situation was, he suspected it would soon become much worse. He had no illusion as to the identity of the other prisoner summoned before his captor, and the upcoming confrontation would be embarrassing for her at least. But he was an OSS officer. He would not betray any secret willingly. Next to the safety of the colony, his life and the life of Colonel Carter were expendable.

He could watch his captor from under his brow. The being was standing proudly, arms crossed over his chest, projecting an aura of certainty, lips curling up in a contained smirk.

More than anything he exuded an impression of self-confidence that was rooted in absolute control. Almost like a Draka really. Even the costume was something a Snake might wear, leather the color of dried blood and burnished metal fasteners combining in a statement of personal power.

The sound of footsteps came from the hallway behind, irregular and dragging. The upcoming prisoner was not coming from her own will and it showed in the sounds of struggling or cursing.

"Let me go you big bastards -" the voice of Colonel Samantha Carter was coming closer, strained but defiant and furious. O'Neill winced inwardly.

"- Jack…?" Surprise and relief in the familiar voice as she remarked the presence of the first prisoner, his crew-cut greying hair ensuring recognition even from behind.

She was brought ahead at a gesture from the leader of their captors. In front and in clear view to face O'Neill. He heard a gasp.

The Goa'uld watched the initial reaction of his prisoners with interest. Some human cultures had cultural issues with nudity and he was curious to see if that was the case here.

The woman gasped in soft shock and turned her gaze away from the nude and kneeling form of the man. A fierce blush came to her face and she fiddled in place, unable to hide anything of her own body with the Jaffas pinning her arms behind her back and the weighted ankle restraints preventing her from raising her feet more than a few inches above the floor.

She caught herself. "Major" she addressed her fellow captive more formally. Not that their situation was anything like formal. "You're alive !"

The Goa'uld let her speak unhindered. Obviously she had less mental discipline as she was talking.

O'Neill cursed her mentally, then softened his reaction. She had never been trained to resist interrogation like him, having spent her entire career in the scientific military establishment. Her workload had never left time for it either.

He had to look up at her and nearly did a mental double take.

_She does have a nice body for a brainiac._ He knew he should have felt somehow ashamed of harboring such dirty thoughts, but it was as much a professional assessment as anything else, he reasoned. And to be frank, the female Colonel wasn't exactly painful to look at. Long trimmed legs, a stomach that barely bulged and breasts which long periods of microgravity had left with barely any sagging. _Oh and she's a genuine blonde._

The evaluation flashed through his mind at lightning speed then his mental discipline reasserted itself. He consciously clamped down on any stirring the sight of the attractive woman might have provoked inside his body and averted his gaze.

"Don't say anything" he spoke flatly between his teeth.

Right at this moment, their captor made a beaming smile of satisfaction and clapped his hands slowly.

"Excellent." His expression changed back to the default smirk of superiority. "We are making progress at last. Isn't it wonderful… Jack ?"

He turned back to the woman and stepped closer, stopping at about an arm length from her. With no pretense at subtlety, his gaze swept her body from top to bottom, lingering over the heaving chest and trimmed pubic hairs.

"A remarkable specimen. Fit, healthy, attractive by most human standards" his head swivelled back to the male prisoner "don't you think, Jack ?"

Without looking, his neatly manicured finger traced a line from the woman's chin down to her navel, drawing shudders from her and a vain effort to shake free of the Jaffas' grasp.

"I'm sure she holds value in your eyes. Am I wrong ?" The smirk was still there, but there was definitely a sinister gleam in those alien eyes when they focused on the female captive again.

"But first things first. It would be impolite to continue this conversation without some introduction first." His tone was playful, delighted in the game that was only starting.

"My name is Lord Baal. What is yours ?" Neck high, head proud, eyes staring into hers, the Goa'uld was the very picture of his kind. Self-assured, arrogant yet cunning enough to play smartly.

After a moment of silence during which Carter struggled between her instincts and higher reasoning the System Lord's eyes flashed, bright and dangerous and his hand darted forward. Strong fingers twisted a sensitive nipple and pain made the woman yelp in surprise.

"**ANSWER ME !**" The combined effect of pain, surprise and the authoritative, deep alien voice made her self control lapse for a short moment.

"Carter" she gasped "Colonel Samantha Carter, Alliance military" she shot out on automatic.

"Shut up Carter !" O'Neill's voice silenced her. "Don't say anyth-" he was cut off by a staff weapon's butt striking his stomach and doubling him over with a cry of pain.

But the advice had its effect, shoring up the Colonel's resolve and mental defences. Her lips sealed shut, her eyes shone defiance.

Baal simply smiled again, his whole expression fatherly and amicable.

"Don't worry, Colonel Samantha Carter. You will talk." The sinister gleam returned. "Whether you break under torture or not."

_**Two months earlier**_

It was easy to add two and two. You didn't even need to be a genius. The concentration of talented brains was therefore overkill to figure out just how to operate the strange piece of equipment found in an out-of-the-place chamber, tucked in a remote corner of Freedom Station's outer shell, far below the habitation levels and right next to a cavernous hangar bay.

Remote, yet a survey and exploration team had eventually stumbled upon it. Actually, the discovery of the massive hangar, so large in fact that its dimensions could theoretically almost accomodate even the colossal bulk of the _New America_ herself save for the fact that not all of it was empty space, far from it - ranks of cathedral-sized gantries and docking cradles were poking out of the walls, skeletal assemblies of metal beams and articulated manipulators and guides for a plethora of flexible piping and cabling obviously intended to service docked ships - had kept the colony's leadership busy enough and the comparatively insignificant find next door was overlooked at first.

After all, space ships were easily recognizable, even when they belonged to a different civilization and tech level, especially when they were plainly docked in a hangar bay with empty space on the other side of the doors.

Doors that were now open to enable direct access and docking for the colony ship's shuttles and auxiliaries doing round-trips between the _New America_ and the station.

Viewed from outside and at a distance, the hangar was a tiny gap in the stupendous metal cliff that was the station's side. Its top edge was located two kilometers "down" from the maglev network and the open rectangular maw only stopped after another kilometer downwards. The opening stretched five kilometers horizontally and its two thousand meters depth made it an almost perfect parallelepiped carved in the floating city's curved lower flank.

The Alliance naval ratings who had first laid eyes on the spacecrafts arrayed inside docking cradles had experienced something akin to a heart attack and an orgasm mixed together.

True, honest-to-God, alien spaceships. Not flying saucers. The shapes were leaner, owing more visual parentage to wet navy ships and high performance air-breathing planes than with Earth's spacecrafts, those intended to ply their trade in vacuum and lacking any aerodynamic streamlining or fairing, their geometries basic assemblages of primitive volumes instead of the curving sides and stacked, wet-ship style decks that were only practical along with artificial gravity.

Not all the docking cradles were occupied - at a glance only a third of the available space was in use. And their occupants came in various sizes and shapes - many were of a small model, the size of a transorbital shuttle in the Solar System and likely providing the same function. A couple other types were much larger, their overall shape that of a wedge with concave sides reminiscent of Earth's early supersonic bombers : elegant gothic wings and blended fuselages, but adorned with geometric protrusions that wouldn't be there on air-breathing machines. Finally, a quartet of fat cylindrical crafts topped the scale, their design starkly utilitarian in appearance with seams and protrusions telling of machinery tucked inside their shells. Their true function was yet unknown, but their size and appearance still exsuded power and purpose.

All were cold and dormant, yet the hulls were clean and evidently in good repair, built to last and tended by the bay's automated systems. Those had come back to life when the station was reactivated, and the crewmen now manning the glassed control post gazing out over the bay's interior could occasionally glimpse one of maintenance robots. They were an ingenious design, black faceted hexagonal boxes at rest, each polygonal slab concealing the articulated limbs which served as their principal mean of locomotion as well as tool-bearing arms.

The hangar bay's controls were quickly understood. They shared the same and increasingly familiar interface philosophy found everywhere else, with intuitive, clearly-laid out flatscreen and holographic interfaces along with a small number of hard interface elements like scrolling wheels and switches, all neatly labeled in embossed Builder's script and - recent addition - sticky-notes with an English translation.

The colonists still had the barest of understandings of the underlying technology, but at least it was user-friendly enough to let them operate it. With the most respectful caution.

As one of the crewmen had put it eloquently, they were "like small kids trying to operate their parents' kitchen without burning or boiling themselves or blowing up the whole house."

In contrast, the grey metal ring sitting in its low-lit room near the hangar bay's main access junction didn't look like something immediately useful.

Until one of the colonists came to see it, who had previously spent some time in what was dubbed the Knowledge Room. And put one and one together. And dragged an overstretched and sleep-deprived Colonel Carter down to confirm his intuition. Strangely, one Major O'Neill had materialized only a moment later flanked by his ever-present pair of Marines.

"Look !" the crewman had said excitedly, pointing at the band of grey metal standing upright on its platform, a dozen steps down from the gallery running all around the circular room "the symbols on that ring ? They look exactly like those on the galactic map !"

Samantha Carter followed the man's indication with bloodshot eyes, her attention just a bit sluggish despite the caffeine that was threatening to replace her bloodstream. The connection made her harrassed face brighten shortly.

"Uh. You're right Ensign" she squinted, willing her eyes to focus on the glyphs "I'd have to get Doctor Nagami here to check but… they do look similar"

"And they're duplicated on that console over there" the finger pointed at an angular pedestal sprouting from the floor and to the side of the erect ring. Its inclined top was taken up by a sort of circular keyboard and the glyphs were indeed reproduced on the keys. The whole contraption seemed made of the same material as the ring itself except for the dome-like bump at the center of the outward-radiating keys, which appeared made of some smooth red glassy substance.

"So what is it ?" O'Neill voiced the logical question aloud. He too hadn't missed the relation with the sets of glyphs that could be found near some systems in the holographic map of the galaxy. There was an obvious connection there. The Major put forward an answer to his own question when the rest failed to reply immediately.

"It appears to be connected with specific places in the galaxy, right ? So I think it's some kind of visualization device."

Carter scratched her head, still considering the possibilities. "Could be" she answered slowly "Type one of the glyph combinations - addresses, really - and a picture of that place appears inside the ring ? A real-time holoview ? Connected to some sensor device at the other end ?"

The lowly Ensign piped up. "Or a communication device !"

"Actually, that's more what I'd expect, yes" the superior officer rubbed her eyes tiredly and struggled against a yawn. "Some kind of real-time, FTL link."

"Well there's one way to be sure…" O'Neill strode down the step, his intent clear. The Ensign went goggle-eyed. "Sir, shouldn't we wait for…"

"What ? It doesn't look like a bomb waiting to go off, does it ?" the Major shot back over his shoulder as he reached the pedestal.

"Errrr" was all Carter found to express, her mental processes slowed by fatigue. "What, where -" she stuttered as her colleague began to press the keys in succession.

"Earth" he simply said.

"But -" whatever objection the female officer intended to put out died as the ring started to spin in place with a rumbling vibration. There was a hum of power and steam - or what looked like steam anyway - jetted from the base of the ring where it disappeared under the floor and then a clanking sound as the ring stopped spinning momentarily and a metal chevron at the top snapped down on the first selected glyph, locking for a small instant before retracting and allowing the circle to resume its rotation again.

O'Neill went on, pushing the combination he had memorized for Earth one key after another, steadily and deliberately, his inputs replicated by the moving band of metal. Carter was clutching her hair and staring at the mechanism and her focus was shared by the three other men present, both Marines fiddling with their slung rifles unconsciously.

_WOOSH_

The sudden rush of displaced air, displaced by something that looked eerily like a horizontal waterspout coming from the space inside the ring, drowned out the seventh and last locking clang. Every human inside the room flinched back instinctively before the unexpected phenomenon only to star open-mouthed at the newly appeared disk of shimmering energy closing the hollow hoop and casting moving shadows on the walls.

It wasn't like anything they had imagined and O'Neill was the first to find his voice again.

"Okay, that's not what I expected" he said quietly, then perked up. "Hey at least it didn't explode !" he called up at the Colonel who was staring dumbfounded at the active ring device. Her gaze switched slowly from it to the man at the controls.

"That… was reckless, _Major_" the voiced emphasis on his grade was a clear expression of rebuke, albeit she had to concede that so far, there was no obvious and pressing danger. "Now what's it supposed to do ?"

The barely chastened Major shrugged. "Well, if your first hypothesis was right, the corresponding sensor for Sol might be out of order."

"Like an untuned vidset showing static" the Ensign interjected, trying to look useful.

That was when one of the Marines suddenly raised his hand to the side of his head in reflex, an automatic and unconscious gesture to somehow listen better at something that couldn't possibly be heard. His masked face wasn't visible but his posture shifted noticeably on the spot, tense and ready for danger. His colleague did the same a fraction of a second later, pointing his rifle at the immaterial surface. The sudden attitude change was caught by the others immediately.

"Sir, I'm intercepting a radio signal" the first Marine quickly answered the wordless question in O'Neill's stare. "It seems to be coming from this aperture" he pointed at the metal ring and its contained pool of energy. The soldier's tone was steady but also betraying excitation and… fear, anger. "I'm putting it on speakers - Sir, it's a Draka communication channel"

Neither O'Neill nor Carter had time to think "Fuck, what ?" before a voice called out, flat and tinny out of the Marine's suit-mounted speaker. Its accent was harsh and unmistakable.

"_**-ol Stah'gate Control, identify yo'self, ovah'. Repeat, unknown dialer t'is is Sol Stah'gate Control, identify yo'self, ovah' -**_" the voice went on, repeating its challenge as the stunned colonists listened on. Eventually O'Neill reacted and broke out of the trance conjured by the voice of the Enemy chasing them seemingly across the boundless chasm of interstellar space. He peered intently at the controls laid out before him and out of intuition slammed his palm on the glowing red dome.

He'd been spot on. The pool of light was shredded out, cutting whatever connection had been established as well as the Draka's repeating call for identification. Silent fell back in the room after a last vigorous outgassing from under the metal band.

"We have to tell the general, _now_."

"Just what were you _thinking_, O'Neill ?"

The General's voice was flat and controlled but it couldn't be construed as serenity. Oh no. In fact, it was controlled anger. "What you did was insanely reckless !" The reproach was hammered out and Carter, standing back in silence, thought _I told him that !_ but didn't intervene. "You might have given the Snakes our location, God damn it !" Frederick Lefarge raised his voice, slamming his hands on the desk again. "We're in no shape to fight off an assault, not now ! You know this perfectly well, Major !"

O'Neill stood at attention, eyes staring at an imaginary horizon above his commander's head, accepting the verbal lashing as it came. With hindsight, he did deserve it. Kind of. He always had an unrepentant streak, but the Boss had a point. The colony could not fend off an assault if the Snakes somehow used the ring-shaped device to… invade, if that was possible. They still didn't know exactly what the thing did. They didn't have the numbers nor the weaponry to fight off a Ghouloon attack in strength, not inside a giant orbital city whose inner workings were still barely understood.

The "stargate" as the Draka voice had apparently called it was now under guard by a reinforced Marine platoon, which by itself was a significant portion of the New America's security complement, in space armor and with the most heavy weapons that could be brought to bear inside the station. The eggheads were swarming over the alien mechanism itself, trying to work out how it was attached and powered and whether it could be moved - or destroyed. The primary examination was pessimistic for the latter. Whatever substance it was made of, it would take nuclear-level firepower to damage it, which was already a fantastic property.

"Do you have anything to say ?" Lefarge finished, his voice quieter and businesslike again. O'Neill wasn't a wet-behind-the-ears officer, there was no point in drawing out the tongue-lashing - the senior man knew the other well enough. Whatever reproach he could make, the man standing in front of the desk had already thrown it at himself.

"And remove that broom from under your uniform." A very faint trace of a smile accompanied the words.

The Major relaxed then and his eyes fluttered down. Face still serious despite the levity of the commander's last remark.

"Well General, at least we know the Snakes do use the… stargate. And if it indeed does what we think it does, they might be building an interstellar empire right now." He paused almost involontarily. The implications of what he'd just said were… worrying to say the least. "I also think that they can't trace back an incoming connection or we'd already be swarming with them now."

Lefarge made a tiny nod. "I hope so as well, but we can't count on it for sure."

"In any case, they might stumble on our… position randomly. We have to prepare for such a contingency."

"Maybe we can prevent the device from activating or accepting a connection" It was Carter's voice cutting in as she took two steps forward. "But first" she stifled a yawn "we have to check exactly what it does and we have to do it soon, General"

"Carter, you should be in a bed, you're barely able to stand" Lefarge frowned as he took in the woman's exhausted features, lined bloodshot eyes and sagging shoulders. She'd been pushing herself for weeks, barely sleeping and gobbling stims to keep going. There were so many things to figure in Freedom Station and she felt like she had to take the lead.

"I can't do that Sir, not now with -"

"Yes you can, _Colonel._ You shouldn't have pushed yourself to the brink of collapse as it is, and you're not going to do any good in your state, so right after this meeting's over you will go to your quarters and _rest_."

He added to cut off any further objection "That's an order".

The blonde woman's jaws worked silently during a couple seconds and then she surrendered with a mix of relief, ingrained discipline and rationalization. Of course it was logical. Fatigue was hindering her mental processes, she could feel it. But it still felt wrong to sleep while the colony was in danger and others were working and doing what she ought to be doing.

"Now, Carter. Go before you collapse on my carpet."

"Y- awwwn" her hand shot up to cover her mouth as the "Yes Sir" she intended to reply morphed into an uncontrollable gaping yawn that threatened to unhinge her jaw. Her eyes went just as wide in self-realization and she gave up on replying, turned on her heel instead and stumbled out of the General's office.

"Now, O'Neill" Lefarge resumed after the scientist left "since you're obviously able to operate the 'stargate' you're going to lead an expedition through it" he raised his hand up, palm outwards to stave off an immediate reply "only if we can determine that it's safe for people."

The other man raised an eyebrow. "I think those ancient hovercams we found could be useful for that."

"Use them, but check with our own equipment too, better safe than sorry."

_**Now**_

Sweaty, naked, moaning and screaming and shuddering, Samantha Carter's state figured a cruel parody of ecstasy. It wasn't pleasure that made her writhe in almost lascivious quivers, but pain, absolute and unescapable. Without the pair of leering Jaffas supporting her body by her armpits she would be convulsing on the ground, in the small puddle of urine which had trickled out of her thankfully mostly empty bladder. Her eyes rolled aimlessly, her features twisted in a caricature of their normal attractiveness, jaws clenching tight and teeth grinding together between hoarse screams - all bathed in the unholy glow of the alien's torture device. It was shredding her, like rusty razor blades slithering along her nerves down every limb and inside her brain, a pain more full and intense it was drowning everything else, drowning out the universe beyond, burning away her conscious identity and leaving only agony to fill her world.

And she could feel - the tiny, remote part of her mind that was still functioning - her life ebbing away, her strength waning. She was dying. She knew it. There was no mistaking it - she knew because it had happened already. How many times she could not remember. She could barely think about it. And she knew death wouldn't be a release, wouldn't save her from the pain.

She'd wake up again, alive, only to be brought back into the cursed chamber. Torture for her and for the man who'd been captured alongside her.

Their tormenter knew what he was doing. Millennia of experience to draw upon. Countless souls broken in the same manner. And he was laughing. It was all a game to him. But a game with very high stakes for all involved.

And as if the pain itself wasn't enough he had introduced refinements. Shame, humiliation, guilt to torment both prisoners' minds.

Perverse games playing on their particular inhibitions. Taking their culture and morals and returning them as weapons against their will.

For the Major, being unharmed while his female colleague was subjected to the most agonizing of tortures in front of him, day after day after day, unable to close his eyes, forced to hear her cries, was beginning to chip away at his steely resolve. Oh yes, he did rationalize it. Forced himself to remain clinical, impassive. To see the captor's scheme for what it was. To ignore the acts his body was forced to undergo, against his will.

He couldn't ignore, couldn't escape the sensations in his own body, no matter how much he tried. And it still made him feel dirty. He couldn't even close his eyes. He couldn't move, his limbs immobilized on the X-shaped timber frame, just barely reclining.

He could feel Carter's eyes on him, despite the pain and despite her own knowledge that it was all a cruel game they were forced to take part in. What did she feel ? Disgust, pity, contempt ?

He shied from the touch. Tried to. His mind screamed _No get away don't touch me you filthy abomination_ but the drugs coursing through his veins and the coin-sized thing on his temple warped his perceptions, corrupted his impulses, forced his body to react in ways perverse and unnatural.

The hands didn't pull away. They continued to dance on his skin and stroke his tightly-knotted muscles, from his thighs to his chest and down his back. Using his own sweat to slide and rub better, tracing arabesques on his body that made him shiver and raised goosebumps. The scent, sweet and musky. Fingers tickling and playing him like a piano, raising his pulse and quickening his breath. Against his will, he gasped, eagerly, expectantly, relishing the light touch of the lithe smooth fingers now curling around his engorged and rock-hard manhood. Encircling the fleshy shaft, stroking and pumping, coiling and snaking down to caress and hold his balls. The mouth continued to brush his chest and face, breathing burning words of lust and forbidden passion in between each wet kiss.

It was wrong. It felt good.

The mouth went down. Lips replaced fingers around the bound man's cock. Tightened around it and stroked and sucked hungrily.

O'Neill breathing became ragged, hoarser. Unarticulated words of disgust and repulsion mixed with sighs of physical pleasure, faster, quicker. His heart beat accelerated, a flush spread on his face and chest.

He spasmed.

The smooth-skinned, pretty-faced slave kneeling between the masculine legs smiled as he received his prize. He'd done well, again. His master would be pleased. He finished milking the last drops and then stepped back with an impish smirk on his glistening lips, making no effort at modesty, flaunting his androgynous body in front of guards and prisoners alike. With a flourish, he turned away from O'Neill and strutted out of the room at a gesture from his master.

Baal watched his living tool leave then stared appreciatively at his male prisoner, keeping the female one under the spell of his_ kara kesh_. She didn't have long anyway. But she was still conscious enough to have missed nothing from the obscene interplay. And the man knew that too. It made his self-disgust so much stronger.

The Goa'uld chuckled. Human morals could be so queer. The righteous constructs they built to prop up their feeble minds against their vast ignorance of the universe could be used and abused so easily. Many were primitive and superstitious and the System Lords took ruthless advantage of it to pull the strings on their human puppets.

Other, rare, didn't fall for the god routine. But they could be exploited as well. One only had to know which buttons to push.

Of course, some - admittedly rare - individuals held up even against the most refined of tortures. It made no difference. Humans couldn't hide anything from a Goa'uld symbiote anyway. But that was a last resort, for reasons every System Lord knew well enough. Any new Goa'ud was a potential rival and backstabber.

The thought made Baal smirk in amusement. _That_ rule he'd finally managed to cheat a little.

_**Back**_

Frederick Lefarge put the tablet-form perscomp aside on the articulated metallic tray attached to the side of his command chair, and raised his eyes to meet Carter's. She had waited for him to finish reading the condensed report, along with the included pictures. Seeing that her superior's attention was again fixated on her person, she resumed speaking almost immediately, unable to contain the comments, observations and explanations overflowing in her mind.

"So yes one could say that this first round of off-gate surveys didn't bring much, and granted we didn't find an uninhabitable planet as we all hoped, but you have to look beyond that. We've managed to confirm the stargate's mode of operation and basic procedures, including the auxiliary systems in the gateroom-"

"Especially that force field" the General cut in.

"Yes, including that" the scientist made a satisfied grin. "We've made several experiments and it seems clear that it prevents incoming matter from rematerializing when activated. With a sentry manning the gateroom round the clock and ready to raise the shield, so to speak, I think we don't have to fear a Draka invasion, even assuming they found a way to determine a wormhole's point of origin... which is highly dubious."

"Wel that's good news. It's not only the Draka I'm afraid of. Who knows what kind of dangers might be lurking in the galaxy ?" Lefarge swept his hand at the master holographic plot hovering serenely beyond his station, presently configured to show Samothrace System and the surrounding area in a one hundred LY radius. The volume was centered around Samothrace, which was zoomed in for readability and out of proportion with the humongous bubble of space around it. While impressive, the translation team had concluded that the wider area display only showed stored data. Apparently Freedom Station's built-in sensors (whatever they were) "merely" managed to show a real-time view of the system itself and a paltry dozen LY around it, which included several other star systems and a small nebula expanding outwards from a small dwarf, the remains of a star who had gone nova millions of years ago.

Three of those systems had their own stargate, according to the galactic map. The Samothracians (as the New America's exiles had started to call themselves) had dialed all three, sending unmanned sensor platforms first. A good thing, because in all three cases the far side wasn't too welcoming of human life, at least without protective measures. Two were outright deathtraps, the stargates standing on barren, atmosphere-less rocks bathed in high energy radiation, sleets of cosmic rays cooking soil beaten and ground to micronized dust by eons of micrometeor impacts. Neighbour One was a Mars-sized ferrous-core planet orbiting approximately one AU from its blue giant sun and was a furnace from hell. Neighbour Three was a large moon revolving around a massive gaseous planet twice the size of Jupiter, the massive gravitational interactions creating a bad case of tectonic activity. In short, volcanos were spouting fire and dotting its landscape like pimples on a teenager's face. The little layer of toxic atmosphere created by the eruptive gasses was constantly stripped away by the onslaught of solar wind canalized by the giant planet's own magnetic field.

Neighbour Two was merely frozen, locked in a distant orbit of its small red star, its surface stuck in a perpetual winter. Dirty water ice and cold nitrogen to breathe, but men in spacesuits could stand and work on it without cooking. The local gravity was .4, and the remains of a Gatebuilder outpost were still jutting out of the ice a couple klicks from the stargate. A team of three had managed to reach it (after the probes found a safe path) and explore the abandoned husk. Walls of the same alloy as Freedom Station's exterior hull had withstood millions of years of weathering and environmental assault, but the interior was utterly trashed by invading ice. Scattered, broken and utterly unrecognizable fragments were the only traces left of the outpost's interior fittings and furnishing. Still, the shell appeared sound and after clearing ice and debris, it seemed possible to recommission it as a base camp.

Based on those early findings one might have wondered exactly why the Gatebuilders, or Alterans as their self-given name appered to be, had put stargates in such uninhospitable places. The answer came in the follow-up pictures taken by the probes, especially the flying holocams embracing a much larger area.

On both N1 and N3 huge excavations were visible, cratering the planetary surfaces. Despite millions of years of erosion softening shapes and lines, the region-sized geometric scars were obviously the remains of extensive strip-mining. More, an artificial structure was spotted in N3's orbit, sitting right in the region where the field interactions of the gaseous giant focused high energy particles from the local star. The structure itself was a tubular lattice kilometers long, and various hot spots indicated that it was still active. Speculations abounded, and the dominant interpretation (supported by Carter herself) had the object being an energy collector. An interpretation reinforced by the similarity with pre-War projects of building a giant anti-matter collector in Jupiter's orbit, where intense electrical fields could be harnessed with a sufficiently large capture device.

For now, there was no way to confirm the hypothesis. A holocam could not overcome the moon's gravity, not with additional weight anyway, and while the starships hanging in Freedom's enormous bay might reach the place, the colonists were still far from the necessary level of knowledge required to operate them safely.

There were so many things to learn and so few resources, Lefarge lamented. The translation team was doing a good job but there just wasn't enough trained personnel, so the handful of Alteran-speaking men and women were being rushed from one spot to another with barely time to rest.

At least everyone knew the basic vocabulary now, as well as the various color nuances and graphical symbols that indicated hazards or dangerous areas in the Alteran way, as well as more basic information such as location of the nearest bathroom. Which were all unisex initially. Just another little difference between strains of humanity separated by a temporal and cultural gulf, it seemed, and after a rash of complaints the various loos in the most traveled areas of the station had received little stenciled adornments in the shape of stick-figure men and women.

_**Now**_

Feet dragging on the polished stone floor, head lolling, O'Neill let the two Jaffas carry his weight as they brought him, again, to the infamously familiar interrogation room. He did not fight them. It would be a useless waste of his depleted strength. Better grit his teeth and endure until an opportunity arose… not that one seemed close. Now more than ever before he understood why the Draka committed suicide before capture, although back on Earth when you died you died for good, at least.

Maybe if he'd kept the OSS-issued, tooth-carried poison capsule every active agent carried during, and often kept after, a mission. He had it removed on Ceres, a little while after he was drafted into the New America project and sent far away from an possible Snake reach. Whatever people thought, not even OSS men enjoyed having a cyanide capsule ready to pop out in their mouth and removing it was always a relief.

It sure would have been handy this time. No use crying after spilled milk though. Besides, a cyanide-induced death might not be enough against the infernal resurrection technology of the Goa'uld.

"Major O'Neill." Baal's voice was honey-smooth as ever, his attire elegantly sophisticated in rich varnished leathers and silk-like fabrics.

"Fuck you" the Earther muttered back, just loud enough for his captor to hear and chuckle good-naturedly.

"Ha ha, still defiant I see. You truly are a remarkable man, O'Neill. It has been centuries since I last tortured a being with your resilience. A shame, really. In other circumstances, I am certain you would have made a remarkably able First Prime."

"Funny, I thought power-mad bastards like you would only want sycophants at their side" O'Neill managed to grate in a tone that was the closest to conversational he could muster. His remark raised another chuckle from the Goa'uld in front of him.

"Of course I see why you would believe that." Baal made a grand sweeping gesture at the damp stone walls and flickering torches around them. "But" he took a step closer and bent to speak almost in O'Neill' ear "I pride myself for being less generally deluded than most of my kind, and I genuinely value competence in my underlings."

"Still an asshole."

Baal straightened, his face showing an expression of mock hurt. All the while the Jaffas remained tight-lipped and stony faced, oblivious of the conversation's meaning as nobody had taught them English.

"Anyway." The System Lord retreated a few steps and crossed his hands behind his back "those games with you and the female are amusing and in other circumstances I would love to continue… but you see, a being of vast power and domains like me has other obligations, and some of my colleagues are the worst spoilsports in the galaxy."

"Wooh, too bad. Are you gonna kill us for good then ?" the Major practically spat.

"Oh but no. You're both too valuable for that. I'll just have to use a quicker way to get the informations I want." His smile became sinister and he barked an order to the Jaffa guards.

A brief moment later, two more warriors entered from a side door, carrying the body of Samantha Carter. She was breathing and merely unconscious, and they deposited her on the bare stone floor next to Baal.

Another pair came after in them, escorting a palace slave carrying a small ornate vase.

The Alliance officer had no idea what was in the container, but his instincts screamed warnings in his head and his hairs prickled involuntarily.

The slave stopped and knelt in front of his master, eyes looking down on the floor, arms raised to proffer the vase.

Baal's left hand went forward and removed the golden lid, handing it off to a Jaffa. A foul smell rose from the open container, and Carter stirred. Her eyes opened, the signal for her Jaffa handlers to hold her hands and ankles firmly pinned on the ground. At the same moment, the Goa'uld right hand plunged inside the vase, and reappeared holding the snake-like abomination that was a Goa'uld's true shape. The little beast immediately started to hiss and snarl. Both prisoners' eyes went wide in shock and disgust.

"Colonel Carter, meet your new friend" Baal practically snickered. "Kheshmet, meet your new body". The little snake hissed louder, crest extended and quivering in anticipation.

"Oh my God what's this !" the pinned woman blurted out, a look of horror and revulsion clear on her features. The same question was on O'Neill's mind.

"Kheshmet here is one of my most loyal and worthy underlings. Unfortunately, he lost his previous host body in battle." Baal explained as he bent down over Carter's defenseless body. Her nudity made her newfound youth all the more evident. The multiple exposures to the sarcophagus had ended up rejuvenating her body, and she was now looking like her twenties - an otherwise extremely arousing sight, were not the present circumstances precluding the Major from appreciating it.

She put her youthful limbs to stress, struggling in her bonds and desperately attempting to break the Jaffas' hold. This fight was hopeless and she shuddered, skin covered in goosebumps when Kheshmet was deposited on her belly. It hissed again and slithered up, covering her skin with gooey fluids, pushing its ugly reptilian head between her round breats in an obscene parody of sex.

She screamed, once, twice, as if the noise would somehow make the beast go away, then averted her face as Kheshmet rubbed over her jaw and brushed the corner of her lips. Her very avoidance gesture made the symbiote's task easier, as it exposed the side of her neck. Baal's hand clamped down, pinning her head in position.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOO-" her ragged scream was cut off when the serpent reared its head and pounced down, puncturing the skin. Bright pain. The whole body of the Goa'uld pushed through the hole, tearing apart tissue as it buried itself in her. A pure look of agony contorted Samantha Carter's face as Kheshmet clamped around her spine and his invading macrodendrites began hijacking her nervous system.

She screamed again, hoarsely, her body writhed and shivered, her limbs beating a frenzied tattoo on the stone like a seizure patient. Sweat blossomed on her skin, her spine arched, proffering her sex shamelessly.

And then she went still and unmoving as if paralyzed, breathing rapidly, eyes wide open and fixated on the ceiling nothing more betraying the struggle happening inside her body as her mind battled Kheshmet's for control… and lost.

Her body relaxed suddenly, features composed again, and her eyes flashed a golden glow.

It wasn't her voice speaking out of her mouth though.

"**My Lord."**

Baal smiled to his minion, who rose up, free from the Jaffas' grip, and glanced down at his, or her, new body, and then at O'Neill with a wicked impish grin.

"**Kneel before your new goddess, slave !"**

_**Back**_

With millions of seven-symbol addresses available in the database the only problem was trying them all. Fortunately, one could narrow down the selection by choosing those who appeared to offer the highest likelihood of pointing to a livable place. One that wasn't baked in radiation, flooded in lava or frozen solid. Unfortunately, if there was a way to automate the selection, it hadn't been found yet. Zooming in a sector of the galactic map, picking an address among seemingly thousands and manually checking the stored data about the system or planet it corresponded to was tedious work. Yet Major O'Neill had been wading through the mountain of data for hours after he was shown how to operate the controls of the holomap, much to the vexation of those scientists who wished to access the database for other uses (and were told in no uncertain words to "get lost").

With a sigh and a grimace, the military man eventually straightened away from the slender pedestal, removed his hands from the control surface and moved them to rub his lower back. Shifting his shoulder a bit to remove the kinks, he then scooped up the small paper notepad where he'd written down a shortlist of gate coordinates for the second round of exploration, and walked out of the crowded room.

Ten minutes later, he was standing in the Command Center and reporting his finds to the General. Thirty minutes later, he was down in the Gate Room along with Samantha Carter, and the sensor probe techs were busy laying down their instruments in front of the transportation ring.

"Dialing in three, two, one… dialing now !" there was a Navy rating manning the dialing console now, as well as the shield switch, and he had earned the nickname "Doorman".

The gate went through the now familiar routine of spinning and locking symbols one after another, until the rumble ceased and the wormhole opened with a _woosh_.

"Connection established and stabilized !" the operator announced in that very Navy way to state the obvious, O'Neill thought.

"Radiation backscatter : normal, EM field appears clear" a sensor tech reported. His sensitive instrumentation didn't detect anything more than the normal background noise in the EM spectrum.

"Sending the hovercam now !" a second one vocalized as the small dark grey sphere floated towards the gate and was swallowed by the event horizon. After a short while it reemerged to reality thousands of LY away, and the picture it sent back caused an eruption of cheers.

As the Alteran-built camera panned around, more of the stargate's surrounding became visible. It was apparently located on a hilltop, and the clearing it stood on made way to the lush green jungle that covered the slopes all the way down to the distant shore. The camera made a 360° and revealed more of the adjoining terrain. From its raised vantage point it appeared clear that it was located on an island, or at least a small peninsula, as the haze in the distance made it impossible to determine whether the land continued further away or not. In any case, the shores were a mix of white sand and near-black volcanic rocks and coral barriers enclosing turquoise waters.

O'Neill whistled. "I think we just found our next holiday resort."

"Actually jungles are often dangerous environments, Major" Carter retorted with total seriousness, until she caught his expression saying "really ?" and remembered what she knew about OSS agent training. "Um, of course you know that" she added lamely for lack of anything else to say.

"Be like telling you that stars are hot" the retort came in a tolerant tone that only excerbated the temporary contrast between the militaryman's cooly amused demeanor and the scientist's (albeit a uniformed one) slightly embarrassed blush. She raised her hand unconsciously to twist and fiddle with a lock of hair, as always when she got nervous, he remarked. Fortunately both were saved from further awkwardness by the data rolling in from the holocam and the follow-up wheeled probe.

"Gravity .97, atmosphere density and composition close to Earth norm, no apparent toxicity, radiation count inferior to Earth norm. Preliminary analysis shows no immediate major environmental hazard, Sir" the technician finished reporting.

"Check the dialer" O'Neill answered, business-like again.

The hovercam floated away and around the mushroom-shaped dialing board. The device appeared intact. Of course, the expedition had found that they could operate the stargate with the same handheld controller as the hovercam, but it didn't hurt to check.

"All right" the Major concluded "Put the probes on stand by, I want everyone suited up, loaded and ready to cross in thirty minutes." There was a flurry of movement in the room as the various crew assigned to the exploration effort started to ready themselves for the trip through the wormhole, and O'Neill addressed the operator last. "Close the connection."

A little over thirty minutes later eight humanoid shapes stood on the grassy surface of the hilltop, having emerged from the immaterial seconds before. Despite the setting, they weren't looking like beach-going vacationers at all. Soldiers in heavy Contaminated Battlefield gear and already cursing the sweltering heat, and less combat-oriented scientists in shapeless sealed plastic suits, ventilated and pressurized. What they lacked in armoring compared to the soldiers', they gained in built-in air conditioning.

Naturally, this made the biological component of their survey the priority task. The sooner they checked the local microbial fauna for hazardous organisms, the sooner they could decide to take the horrible suits off.

The four Fleet Marines walked away, stopping a good distance from the tree line.

"Hey, why do you think the vegetation isn't covering the stargate ?" one of them suddenly asked on the general channel, where communication was less formal and more free-flowing. The other voices paused. Apparently the science types thought it was a very good question.

"Well, I have no idea" one of the voices finally came back. It was one of the scientists, but under the shapeless suits it was hard to see which one spoke. "Maybe some sort of field ?" another added tentatively.

"Yeah, maybe from time to time the gate emits a clearing, uh, burst, just like the waterfall effect when it activates, but omnidirectional, see" the last one chimed in.

It sounded as good an explanation as another, O'Neill thought. Except the gate better not do it when people were around.

"Or maybe the locals do it" another soldier commented, every other pair of eyes converging on him as he pointed sideways. Following his direction, the source of his postulate was plainly in sight. At the edge of the clearing, approximately at a 9 o'clock position from the stargate, was a break in the jungle. An artificial one, with a beaten path where thin grass hardly grew out of reddish soil. Looking closer, some branches appeared clean-cut, as with a sharp object.

It was a path down.

"Okay. Get the 'cam to follow that path. The rest of you" O'Neill addressed the science team "hurry up ! I need to know if we're viable here !"

Minutes passed under the scorching sky. The similarity with Earth was outstanding, the local sun the same color and size and the water just as blue as in the Bahamas. Judging by the environment the day-night cycle had to be similar as well. Yes, O'Neill thought, it might well make for a fine holiday resort. Assuming the locals were friendly. Which couldn't be taken for granted.

"Clarke, Wilson, put some sensors and claymores out there, but don't stray too far, keep in shouting range"

A pair of "Aye Sir" answered and the two soldiers moved forward, plunging in the greenery, watched by the other pair, rifles and grenade launchers ready to make mincemeat of anything arriving with hostile intentions.

The portable bioscan gear was a direct adaptation of the Alliance military's NBC battlefield warning boxes, intended to sift the air for the most minute sign of weaponized microorganisms, chemicals and toxins. The need was compounded by the Drakas being masters of biosciences and never shy of showing it off - in the end, though, the sophisticated analysis equipment didn't prevent an even more sophisticated Stone Dogs from achieving exactly the result every Alliance war planner had feared. Of course, the madness-inducing virus wasn't initially disseminated on a battlefield and it had lain dormant, hidden and unremarkable until the Domination's activation signal woke it up.

In hindsight, it was perhaps a forlorn cause, for the Alliance's most sophisticated biological detection gear was nothing more than copies of stolen - or otherwise acquired - Draka hardware, wide-spectrum reactants and DNA probes.

Still, the sturdy box sitting on the grass near the stargate contained some of the most cutting edge Earth-developed technology, and it rapidly dissected the air and whatever particles and molecules it carried.

It took a little over five minutes for the portable biolab to complete its scan and beep to signal the completion of its task, and another minute for the bubble-suited operator to read the full printout wirelessly sent on his wristcomp.

At last the verdict came.

"The air is safe," he stated with relief "we can crack those suits open and breathe freely" a few "weee!" sounded off in response. "But that's only the air, for now let's keep the gloves and be careful what we touch, okay ?" he cautioned. Nods of assent showed the team's understanding, and then the scientist unzipped his own hood, immediately taking a deep breath. Seeing how he failed to drop dead or otherwise cough up bloody pieces of his lungs, his colleagues imitated him a moment later, still keeping a wary eye on the biolab.

O'Neill observed them, and removed his own breathing mask after a short internal debate, feeling that it was too early to trust fully in the local environment.

The Marines were therefore disappointed when the Major told them to keep their CB gear on, just in case.

They weren't allowed to remove it until the next hour, and by then more interesting things were about to happen.

_One day later_

"He says the last time the gods came, it was long ago, before his father's father was born"

O'Neill grimaced. "Not exactly what I'd call an accurate recording, Mr Moore" His remark brought up an echoing grimace of helplessness on his interlocutor's face, along with spread arms in the classic "what can I do ?" gesture. A tall man, soldily-built and preternaturally tanned for a spacer, Simon Moore was a civilian, a systems engineer belonging to the New America's recently thawed general crew, but what singled him out among the crowd was the Hawaian heritage on his mother's side. His father had been a sailor in the United States Navy, stationed aboard a cruiser in Pearl Harbor and he'd taken wife there - not a rare occurrence altogether in those parts.

The Moore family, complete with the dog had moved to San Diego in Simon's twelfth year, but the boy had acquired a passing knowledge of the islander tongue and later kept using it with his elderly mother, more as a game than anything else. He'd certainly never expected that skill to ever become useful one day… yet he was now the only one who could communicate with the locals on the sunny island planet.

The reason was quite clear when one looked at the natives. Bronze skin adorned with ritual tattoos, naked save for simple wrapped loinclothes, they showed their typical Polynesian features as the Samothracians watched them go about their daily occupations - mostly fishing in the lagoon's shallow waters or beyond the reef barrier in narrow outriggers. The village, a loose collection of vegetal huts close to the white sand shore, had returned to a semblance of routine after the initial shock of first contact. Women chatting and children playing, men carving wood and cleaning fish and the omnipresent singing ; yet there was an undercurrent of tension.

"Hell, they don't keep track of time as we do, just like the folks back on Earth used to. They live day to day and don't really care for a calendar… could have happened a century, a thousand years ago, it's the same for them" Moore elaborated. He was just back from a lengthy discussion with the village elders, and both men were standing at a distance from the huts, under the tall canopy-jungle where the path uphill began. A three hour trek uphill to reach the stargate, invisible from their current location.

They weren't alone of course. Apart from the discreet Marine presence doing their best to blend in with the vegetation, the hut closest to the path was occupied by the medical team and there was a small throng of mothers and children waiting outside to have the strange foreigners give them a check-up and heal the odd scratch or sore tooth. T

The humanitarian gesture had been authorized by the General in the interest of starting good relations with the first humans found outside the Solar System - and _that_ fact had not appeared as surprising as it ought to. Not after everything the _New America_ crew had already experienced and learnt.

"Did they tell you anything about those gods ? Who they were, what capabilities they possessed ?" O'Neill insisted. Moore threw his hand in the air. "Major, I'm barely understanding them as it is ! I'm an engineer, not a linguist and they're not speaking Hawaian either - this language's clearly related, more like Southern Pacific actually, but it's like a Frenchman trying to understand an Italian, see ? The words are related but they're not the same nor pronounced the same way !"

"All right, all right" the officer conceded "I'm not expecting miracles. You're doing a great job" he clapped the other man's shoulder. "At least they're not trying to eat us".

"Ha ha." The civilian's tone made it clear that he didn't thought the joke very funny. "Another thing" he glanced around, a gesture not missed by the Major. "You know they thought we were gods when we first arrived here…"

"Yes, and we made it clear that it wasn't the case." Freedom Station's orders had been very adamant on that. Samothrace's history would not start off with them impersonating gods to take advantage of less advanced races. The very idea was deemed abhorrent and reeking of Snake behavior.

"Well, they understand we're not gods" and that had indeed taken some doing to persuade them.

The natives did not believe their visitors were truly human at first - why, they didn't have the same skin color ! - and the different… behavioral standards had caused a few embarrassing, if harmless, moments. Mostly embarrassing for the visitors, at least. Especially when the local women had insisted for the first shiny-eyed anthropologist-wannabee to undress and show they belonged to the same species, complete with all dangling parts.

Much laughter and much blushing had followed. It didn't help that the Marines in the background had snickered loudly when particularly skeptical native matrons had cupped and weighed the guinea pig's genitals, obviously commenting all the way.

In the end, the examination was conclusive enough and the unwilling volunteer was allowed to gather his clothes and dignity with O'Neill's personal promise that any video files of the proceedings would be erased after debrief.

And the thoughtful Major had already warned the Marines to keep their dicks holstered, with dire threats of disciplinary duty for whomever caught the first case of Space Crabs.

Moore gave O'Neill a meaningful look. "We're not gods all right, but there might still be a problem down the way with that… you see, the locals apparently view the stargate as taboo. You know what this means, right ?"

An affirmative nod. "Sacred, holy, forbidden to mere mortals."

"Exactly. The stargate and the whole hills around it are… well, religious places where only the spirits go. The spirits and the gods, at least".

O'Neill frowned. "But there were recent traces around the stargate - and the path, too"

"Only the priests and chosen are allowed there for ceremonies, Major. The last one was a couple days ago hence why the ground was freshly trampled. But apart from those times, no one, under penalty of death, can go there"

"That's… annoying" _Especially if they insist on the death penalty thing._

"Yeah well, the elders are miffed with us hanging over their taboo place, I caught that much, but at the same time they aren't stupid either and they clearly recognize that we're not them. But all the same we should tread with caution, try not to offend their sensibilities"

"All right, I get the drift. But we're not going to leave the stargate, sorry, too important. This is the first life-bearing planet we found, Mr Moore. We can't just go away. I'm all for respecting the natives' rights, but in the end my loyalty goes to the Alliance, well Samothrace, and this place holds vital importance for it right now."

"No problem Major. We can probably hammer some kind of agreement with them if we have to, 'specially if we bring things like medicine and such…"

O'Neill interrupted with a snort. "Bit like old-school colonialism, don't you think ?"

The other man shrugged. "Hey, better than what the Snakes would do in our place," the thought darkened both men's faces until he added in a lighter tone "and I don't know what the General thinks, but I know I'd love to sprawl on the sand with a Margarita in my hand !"

That perspective at least was appealing enough to bring a smile on both faces.

_A week later_

One thought blazed in O'Neill's mind as he sat on the warm sand and surveyed his surroundings.

_Damn, Carter looks good in a bikini._

That she did, lying on a beach towel (where she'd found one was a complete mystery, and its bland off-white color gave no clue to its provenance) and shielded from the ferocious local sun by a lush palm tree jutting out obliquely from the ground behind her. Nothing but the distant sound of breaking waves and the rustle of leaves, and the officers' privacy sheltered by the small cove's isolation from the base camp. It would have been easy to forget they weren't on Earth - save for the personal weapons and hand held radio kept at arm's length just in case the local fauna wasn't as harmless as it appeared. That, and the low-profile alarm perimeter dropped by the Marines.

Naturally, her being herself there was a perscomp laying around as well as a spilled stack of printouts, kept from fluttering away by a hand-sized seashell that made a perfect improvised paperweight.

"Hi Jack," her eyes followed him, her face turning fractionally sideways "finally decided to take some time off ?"

"Yes I did, Ma'am" he glanced at her, trying not to ogle. The blue bikini was far from indecent - well, he corrected, it wasn't compared to what the Drakas wore at the beach, when they bothered to wear something and that, only when they were vacationing out of the Domination - but it still exposed some decidedly delightful curves.

She flipped some sand in his direction. "Drop the Ma'am, it makes me feel old, seriously. We're both off duty, on a tropical beach to boot. Keep the formality for another time, will you ? You can call me Sam."

"Okay…" he trailed, not entirely resolved to call her by her name - somehow he felt that it would be too much familiarity at the moment. He shook his head. He couldn't deny that Carter was attractive - but she was also a superior officer (even if her grade was the consequence of her being a high-level scientist instead of combat experience), and there was the overall context they were in, all of them.

The discovery of Marae Nui - as the natives called their place - had boosted the population's morale back on Freedom Station. The new world being a close approximation of the stereotypical island paradise, complete with friendly - or at least non-threatening - inhabitants whose ancestry clearly pointed back to Earth, was an additional positive factor.

And the gods they spoke of were another interesting mystery - whoever they were, they used the stargate as well which marked them as fellow technology users. Maybe, the speculation ran, these beings were related to the enigmatic power which had brought the _New America_ to an unexpected destination ? In any case, the natives' memory didn't seem to paint them as particularly nasty - more for lack of actual memories than anything else. The "gods", whoever they were, didn't seem to take a close interest towards the tribes scattered across the archipelagoes surrounding this island. At any rate the expedition had found no sign of advanced technology, save the stargate itself.

Yet the weight of the Exodus and memories of the lost ones still burdened hearts and minds. And long term survival was not assured for the fugitives, not yet and it rested far too much on alien, barely readable technology for comfort.

Major Jack O'Neill didn't exactly feel like flirting, yet. Still, there was nothing wrong with enjoying Sam's company, and the warm sand.

"Actually" he said slowly "I'm surprised _you_ took some time off."

"Mmmm, the General told me."

"Again."

She made a little horizontal shrug. "To be frank, that's the kind of order I don't really mind following, even if I feel a bit guilty about it."

Her companion chuckled. "Hah. Don't." He then added in a slow, thoughtful tone "Don't feel guilty about good times. You never know…" the end of his sentence hung in the air for her to complete its bitter-sweet meaning. She did so, in her mind. _You never know when they end. So true._

"Anyway" O'Neill resumed a minute later. "We're gonna have a fish roast tonight." His announcement was greeted with a raised brow.

"Really ? Sounds fantastic. Fresh food… not freeze-dried rations… you're serious ?"

"Like a heart attack. Caught by our new friends. Good thing, I had to order the jarheads not to do any grenade fishing earlier today."

"Knowing them, they're probably trying to devise a way to get around that order" Carter observed after she finished laughing.

"I wouldn't expect anything less."

Another minute went by with both officers content to merely lie down and watch the sea.

"You know, there's a hundred thousand people who'd love to be in our place." O'Neill spoke again.

"Uh uh. The Council's been thinking about it" the informal government of the colony, namely Frederick Lefarge and his closest civilian and military advisors, most of them the heads of their respective departments, of which Carter herself was a junior member of sorts. "In principle, we'll set a rotation, everyone will have a scheduled vacation time here -"

"-Won't amount to much". _Too many of us for this tiny outpost._

"No" she resumed "at least not in the foreseeable future. Hence why we'll make it a reward as well."

"Oh ? Reward for what ?"

"Well… it's not set in stone. It's probably going to come down to what the council feels deserves it. There's a consensus on one thing, though."

"What ?" O'Neill turned a curious eye towards her.

"They want to reward pregnant women. As they say, Samothrace needs babies. There were some objections that we aren't sure yet how many mouths we can feed, but the General himself favors a natalist policy."

"Makes sense. Our colony won't be viable otherwise." He didn't add _and we'll probably need more soldiers one day if we take the fight back to the Snakes._

"It's going to be…" she paused, looking for words "weird, for some, many adults in the crew were already parents and, they… lost, left, children, on Earth" she finished hesitantly, unsure of her companion's past history and feelings.

"Have you ?" he asked in response, not altogether brusquely, but there was a faint edge in his voice.

She waited a few seconds before answering.

"No" She stared at the distant horizon. "I guess my studies, and then my research didn't left me time to marry and have kids. The stereotypical self-absorbed scientist" she finished with a self-deprecating chuckle. There was an old pain there, unsaid, O'Neill detected, echoing his own but for a different reason.

"Hey, you're still young. Who knows ?" he remarked lightly.

"Thanks, but I'm still neck-deep in work - present time excepted. And kids need a father anyway."

"Yeah… well, sure, that's a required ingredient, yes." the Major managed to say before discreetly clearing his throat and mentally strangling the little voice screaming _Give that woman your sperm, do it now, you moron !_

He scratched his chin instead, then stared blankly at the birds doing circles in the distance to distract his brain. He didn't know if seconds or minutes had passed when Carter's voice interrupted his trance.

"What about you ? Did you have a family…" she stopped and gave herself a slap in the face. "I'm sorry" she added quickly as his face hardened "that was stupid of me. Didn't want to bring bad memories…" she trailed, unwanting to continue and dig herself deeper.

She peered at his face, looking for signs of anger, inwardly cursing her lack of sensitivity. He stared down, and made a deep sigh, his fingers idly sifting the fine sand.

"No" he spoke at last "don't blame yourself. We all have… issues, I guess."

He paused for a handful of heartbeats before going again, his voice level, neutral, almost clinical, marking every period between phrases "I was married. We were young, I had just signed into the Army. First years were all right. Not alway easy, being in the military tends to do that for you… Had a baby, a boy. Name was Charlie." A longer pause. "To cut things short, the marriage went seriously downhill after I joined the OSS. Can't really blame Sara for that, too, I was never there for the next four years before she asked to divorce and took our son with her to Boston."

"I'm sorry." Carter's expression was sadder than his stoic face. She didn't want to ask what happened, but the question got an answer nonetheless.

"Eventually Charlie grew up and decided he wanted to be a designer… a_ fashion_ designer, would you believe that."

"Oh."

"Hey, nothing wrong with that. I wasn't pissed that he didn't go career after his service, not after my own family experience, you see. No, I didn't mind that." There was another pregnant pause, as if he was unsure whether to confide the rest. With a flash of feminine intuition, his confidante thought she understood.

"You mean… was he…" she didn't dare say the word.

"He wasn't into women, yes." Others would have said it more crudely. _Faggot. Queer. Cocksucker._ Had it not been his own son, he'd have used those words too.

"I'm sorry" Carter repeated with genuine commiseration. Having an homosexual child in the Alliance's generally conservative society was a source of shame and disappointment even for the most liberal-minded parents. Homosexuals were something immoral, perverse, unnatural - something only the Snakes didn't mind, irredeemably depraved and corrupt as they were themselves.

"Anyway, that's all past. He went to London to study art and design and he was there when the war started." O'Neill said with finality. There was no way Charlie could have survived London's nuclear pyre. But still, despite whatever disappointment he might have had with his only son's choices Jack still felt pain and regret above all. Whatever sins Charlie had committed didn't warrant what the Snakes had done to him and to everyone else. For that too the Snakes would pay one day, and that hard kernel of hate fueled the cold fire and determination at the Major's heart.

He almost jumped when Sam's fingers touched his side, just a short instant before she pulled her hand back, feeling the brief physical contact was enough, that anything more would be improper even if her instincts told her to hug him and murmur soothing words.

Short as it was the gesture of comfort wasn't lost, breaking the man's uncharacteristic lapse in melancholy.

"Thanks… Sam." He smiled at her, and she smiled in return.

Unknown to all on Mara Nui yet, a threat was looming above the planet's surface. The Samothracians thought they hadn't detected any sign of advanced technology - but the cloaked Goa'uld surveillance satellite in geostationary orbit above the stargate had not missed the high-energy signatures of several wormhole connexions in a narrow timeframe.

Mara Nui wasn't a high-value world - it didn't contain any easy-to-mine naquadah or trinium, its population was small and scattered. But it still belonged to Baal's domains, and System Lords did not, as a rule, tolerate trespassers.

Low priority as the island planet might be, an Al'Kesh squadron was dispatched from the nearest Garrison World with orders to investigate and capture whoever had dared challenge Lord Baal's dominion.

**Now**

"Well hello, handsome"

Major O'Neill flinched as Carter's fingers touched the side of his head and ran through his hair playfully. A mishievous smile was on her face, a face that was younger than before, and that was just one of those details that kept him very conscious of the act that the women standing seductively before him wasn't truly Samantha Carter. Yes, it was her body, but the will animating it wasn't her. It was the mind of a cruel puppeteer who took pleasure in subjecting others to slavery - worse, imprisoned them inside their own bodies. As if to reinforce that reality, her blue eyes shone a malignant golden glow and her voice turned into the deep, distorted one of the Goa'uld.

"**Why are you trying to pull away, Major" **it smirked, running its fingers down his cheek. Perfectly manicured nails raised goosebumps as they traced a line downwards from his chest to his hip. He shivered again, unsure whether it was from horror or something else. He couldn't keep his eyes from staring at her form, couldn't deny the lust he felt even though his conscious mind forced it down. The "goddess" Kheshmet obviously didn't believe in body modesty and appeared determined to flaunt the perfection of her host with as little compunction as a common Draka bitch. The clothes she wore didn't even deserve the name - they were more like extended jewellery and did more to display her skin than conceal it. Likewise the heavy makeup made her look like a prettied up whore - an expensive one for sure, but a whore nonetheless.

"**I can see that you're attracted to this human"** the unearthly voice went on, "**and I know for sure that she was attracted to you as well"** a mirthful laugh was the only exterior sign of the mental exchange going inside the hijacked brain, where a furious Samantha Carter was - figuratively - going red at Kheshmet's revealation of her deepest thoughts and desires only for her impotent rage to augment the symbiote's sadistic glee.

O'Neill could only listen, torn between satisfaction at receiving confirmation of a suspected mutual attraction, and outrage at the circumstances of the revelation. He couldn't hide anything of his state either, bound on the familiar tipping frame and entirely naked save the Goa'uld mind-altering device on his temple. Except this time, the device didn't have to overcome his natural aversion to same-sex partners and merely unleashed longings that were, at their core, entirely natural.

Kheshmet stepped forward, bringing the tip of her nipples in contact with O'Neill's glistening torso through the thin strands of silver making up her cascading necklace, and rose on her feet to bring her face level with the helpless man's. She stared in his eyes for a second, a thin smile of awareness and expectation on her lips, and watched his reaction close-by when her right hand went for his erection. She didn't miss the twitch and the sudden exhalation of breath, but she also read the still-present defiance in the steely-grey eyes. Even now, even through his undeniable arousal, the mind of the Major was fighting the struggle against his body's instincts.

She began to stroke his flesh slowly, rubbing along the fleshy shaft from tip to base and curling fingers to caress the balls hanging tight underneath. Her other hand found a grip on his buttocks and lower back, massaging the skin and muscle in synchronization with the other hand's movements ; and she brought her face closer again to lick at his right ear, sending shivers of pure pleasure down the Major's nerves.

"**This is what Samantha Carter dreamed of doing to you"** the Goa'uld whispered. "**She can feel everything I do with her body…"** a small laugh "**such a shame your people's silly morals prevented you from acting on those desires… maybe you both should take it as a favor I'm doing you…"**

"You… goddamn… freak !" O'Neill managed to blurt out, and Kheshmet paused. She brought her head back with a supple movement and they stared again eye to eye, the man panting, the female body tensed in frozen motion.

Her eyes flashed again, and then she batted her lashes at him in a parody of seduction.

"Really, Jack" it was Carter's natural voice speaking lasciviously, "I know you want me and I want you too" her right hand gave a single jerk in support of her statement "why don't we just drop the pretense ? Kheshmet is right, you know… I really wanted you to fuck me, right there and then on that beach, the second day" she smiled wistfully "and it would probably have happened if the Jaffas hadn't attacked at the time they did. Wouldn't it have been wonderful ?" Her smile took on a more present mood. "We can make up for that lost time, thankfully !" She looked at her prospective lover happily, as if expecting an answer.

Which came with -still- stubborn resistance.

"I know you're not Sam, stop trying to fool me you fucking snake !" he practically spat at her.

Kheshmet feigned a disappointed moue at the response, then tilted her head back to let out a short crystalline laugh.

"Oh Jack, really" her mouth eventually spoke again as her head made a disbelieving, denegating gesture "I am so disappointed by your attitude ! Here I am doing everything to please you… and this is how you thank me ?"

Her blue eyes hardened suddenly as another smile appeared on her lips, one tinged with sadism and viciousness. O'Neill gasped in shock and surprise an instant later, as Kheshmet closed in again, her face an inch from his, erect nipples rubbing on his chest, one hand squeezed between their two bodies as it continued to clasp his hard-on. It was the other hand that drew the surprised gasp though, by inserting an extended middle finger straight up inside the man's rectal passage.

"**Now Major"** the Goa'uld voice came back "**you should be thankful I'm hosted inside this perfectly fine female body"** it susurrated sweetly "**I have been too long out of a host, and my kind enjoys the pleasures offered by your species' reproductive functions greatly indeed. So I will take pleasure as it suits me and you will provide it to me just as this very host body provides me with the carnal envelope to receive it"** Kheshmet hammered the fact into O'Neill's ear.

Realization that he was effectively a body-snatching, power-hungry alien's sex toy did little to calm the officer's inner outrage. But the mind-altering disk was still active on his temple and overriding his conscious mental barriers - the artificial state of arousal even made him crave the sudden anal penetration by Carter's finger. He felt his rectal muscles clench hungrily around the fleshy plug, just like his penis quavered inside her grasp.

"**You are only fit to serve us in any case"** Kheshmet concluded "**and serve you will, whether you truly want it or not !"**

Any protestation from the man's part was stamped out before it could be worded, when Samantha Carter's commandeered lips parted and covered his own in a hungry kiss, and the sudden terror O'Neill felt as the thought of Kheshmet - in his true form - invading his mouth was the last conscious, independant thought he had, for her hand came up to press on the shiny silver disk on his temple. A mental command, transmitting through the naquadah lacing her bloodstream, dialed the device's effect up to the maximum, and the Major's normal thought process was blanked out by a rushing tsunami of pure, undistilled lust.

The hours that followed did satiate Kheshmet's cravings, and the ecstasy shared with an unwilling Samantha Carter and a willing, if artificially so, Jack O'Neill. Not that he truly experienced them as his unshackled, automaton body merged with the possessed female's, the whole moment passing as if through a drugged haze until it was all over and Kheshmet returned him control of his own flesh.

Alone in his damp, dark cell again, covered in a sheen of cold sweat and feeling as if all the vigor had been drained from his body - which wasn't far from the truth indeed - the Major was left with a perfect recollection of his involuntary deeds.

Only then did he grab his hair and scream, for Kheshmet's parting words had left no doubt to her intentions and he thought he heard her malicious laughter, long after she had left the cell.

"**Do not despair, Major. Soon the rest of your people will join you in captivity !"**


	4. Chapter 3

_I know… it's been a while.__ Real-life stuff, burnout, a new computer and a 3 year video game backlog are to blame for it (FYI I'm currently playing Fallout 3 and Mass Effect 2). But this story was never abandoned. Here's the completed chapter 3, and work has now started on chapter 4._

_Enjoy!_

**Chapter 3**

**Home Invasion**

To say that General Lefarge was worried sick would have been the euphemism of the century. There had been no news from Mara Nui and the thirty-five missing crew for days after the lone confirmed survivor had managed to gate back. And the escaped planetologist's tale was a dark one.

It had all began well enough. A tropical island, friendly natives, great beaches and no hazardous fauna. Some edible plants, an abundance of fish, and hints of more land available for use in the vicinity. Major O'Neill had given his own go-ahead for an increased presence, and nobody could have guessed otherwise. In any case, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to let the crew breathe some fresh, non-canned air and walk on something else than metal floors or the still barren ground of the Dome, where experimental planting of various Earth essences was just starting to yield results.

Then the sky had fallen on everyone's head.

As far as the escaped scientist could tell, it began with an incoming wormhole, and a routine warning on the general net. It was an unscheduled activation, he remembered thinking, but nothing to get particularly antsy about. He went about his task of taking magnetic readings on a remote hill without even a Marine escort. After all, he had a gun and knew how to use it, a locator beacon and a communicator. He wasn't taking much of a risk going around on his own and he did relish the opportunity to spend some time alone, just with himself, and gobble some of the edible berries that grew on some local trees (and were verified as edible indeed, he wasn't reckless).

His unwary state of mind was shattered seconds later when shouts and the sound of weapon fire burst from his communicator, immediately followed by a general red alert broadcast.

And he didn't have time to ask questions. There was a sudden burst of static, then silence from the Gate detachment, broken a moment later with a cacophony of yelled "what's happening ?" and "we're under attack !" and all the in-between variations thereof.

Spurred by the sudden urgency, he climbed the rest of the way to the top of the hill and then crawled up the topmost tree, remembering techniques he'd put to good use during his childhood.

From this improvised vantage point he had an unobstructed, if distant view on the stargate, big as a hairpin, and even smaller dots were moving out of it. He couldn't see the native village nor the Samothracian settlement, but his heart skipped a beat when his eyes glimpsed dark dots in the sky, diving from above and resolving into fat wedges of gunmetal grey. Space ships sweeping from orbit, had to be.

The two shapes pulled out of their dive above the sea and came straight towards the land. No, towards the settlements.

He froze, squinting and damning himself for not bringing binoculars.

He didn't realize his jaw dropping nor his eyes widening in pure shock, nor even his heart skipping a beat. His brain couldn't do anything but stare, as the flying vessels curved over the distant shores and each dropped a sun-bright projectile. They seemed to arc down lazily - it was an illusion due to distance, the scientist knew - and struck outside his field of vision. But even though he couldn't see the impacts themselves, the muted flash was clear enough. And then any lingering doubt as to the nature of the things vanished when two fireballs erupted from beyond the ridgeline and grew into sizable mushroom clouds, followed seconds later by the loud rumble of artificial thunder.

Sub-kiloton blasts, his analytic mind told him automatically. Equivalent yield to a fuel-air bomb. Lethal radius of several hundred meters.

His colleagues, and the natives, were dead, he realized. Someone had come from outer space… to kill them, without any warning, without asking any questions. Who could do that ?

He felt a sudden moment of panic and terror. Was it the Draka ? Had they found them… and sent starships thousands of light-years from Earth ? How could it even be possible ? He shook his head, it was preposterous. There was no way the Snakes could build faster-than-light ships… was there ? And if they were here… only a horrible fate awaited him and any survivor. Slavery, at best. The Turk, at worst. He had to get out, had to warn Freedom Station.

He powered down all his equipment, hid the scientific instruments under branches and leaves. He couldn't see very well what the mysterious attackers were doing, and didn't dare call on the radio net. Whatever happened around the burnt ruins of the settlements, he didn't see. He waited two days before he dared make his way, as cautiously as he could, towards the stargate. By that time, the Jaffas had left with the only survivors - though he couldn't know that. The bodies of the Marines were nowhere to be seen, but there were clear signs of fighting around the stargate. Burns and bullet impacts. The burns he attributed to enemy weaponry.

He spent another two hour lying on his stomach close to the treeline, watching and listening intently. There was nothing but the rustle of leaves and the occasional insect noise. Eventually, in the deepest black of the night he leopard-crawled to the dialing pod, gun ready in his hand, and gingerly pressed the combination for Samothrace, only powering his communicator to make a quick emergency call prior to entering the outgoing wormhole.

Back to Freedom Station's relative safety he was immediately debriefed by no less than the General himself, and a dark veil of fear had descended upon them all.

The guard was reinforced in the gate room, and owing do the reported space ship threat as many of the _New America_'s auxiliaries were moored inside Freedom Station, where they would be better protected. Those engaged in the exploration of Samothrace System were ordered to find a quiet place and go dark, as to the mothership orbiting opposite the station, there was no easy way to hide it but the sheer power of its main drive could be wielded as an improvised weapon if necessary, in addition to its main energy and railgun batteries.

Days passed in anxious anticipation of an attack, one the colonists weren't certain they could fight effectively. There were indications of defensive systems on the station, but so far every attempt at accessing their controls had proven useless, as if they needed a special access key to be unlocked. Which the Earthers felt was certainly a reasonable precaution, but in their current state of trepidation was frustrating to say the least.

And the fate of the missing seemed much too clear. A hovercam was sent to recon the area during daytime and had transmitted pictures of two scorched craters surrounded by still-smoking debris and a ring of flattened, blackened vegetation. A few carbonized human remains in the periphery of the blast zone were all that was left of the natives and crewmen on detachment.

The probe's mission was the cut short by a stream of bright golden bolts bracketing its flight path from behind, and quickly found their mark destroying the little robotic observer and making the human operator jump on his seat.

After that, no further gate travel happened out of security considerations, against the voices who called for continued exploration - if only to find a safe world to flee on in case Samothrace was found by its faceless enemies.

The wait finally ended, and at first it sounded like a happy end.

**March 17****th****, 2011**

**Freedom Station**, **Samothrace System**

It was an excited, almost to the point of stuttering, voice who woke up General Lefarge on a bright thursday morning. Of course, it was thrusday morning only so much as the colonists had kept Earth time inside the station, for the artificial environment allowed them to adjust the local day and night cycle to their taste. At least as long as they stayed inside the walls.

The sleepy man groaned at the insistent beeping coming from his bedroom's intercom panel, rubbed his grit-encrusted eyes, yawned twice, after which his trained organism remembered the routine of waking up before the expected time honed by years of military service, and then ran through the process of leaving the bed without waking up the wife, a procedure honed by years of marriage, idly reflecting on the fact that insistent machine beeping didn't wake her up, but rocking the mattress lightly would inevitably do so. Something that still didn't fail to awe him even after years of marriage, too. Maybe, he thought, because every time he did manage to silence the nagging noise before thirty seconds had elapsed.

"Yes" he half-yawned. He was careful to keep it to audio only. No need for underlings to see him in his just-out-of-bed state.

"General this is Ensign Powell in the gate room we have a situation !" a voice tinged with excitement and apprehension blurted through the speaker without so much as a pause.

Mention of the stargate brought Lefarge to full awareness, and his body stiffened perceptibly.

"Speak out, Ensign" he answered flatly.

"We have an incoming wormhole Sir… and Sir, we're getting a transmission. It's Colonel Carter Sir, she's alive !"

"What ? What kind of transmission ? Did you code check her ?" They couldn't just assume her identity.

"Affirmative Sir, both recognition words and transmitted data keys are authentic. We already checked them."

"Is the cork on ?"

"Shield's active Sir. Nothing's coming in until we drop it, only on your order Sir."

The General deliberated in his head. The guards had followed the procedure, and apparently whoever called had the right recognition codes… but those could conceivably be faked or obtained through torture.

"Can you put her through ?" he enquired a moment later.

"Yes Sir, just an instant." The Ensign's voice faded. A short moment later, another came back, not as clear as the first one and heavily filtered by the radio.

"_...eneral, it's me, Carter !_"

The man's brow furrowed. Despite the leap of hope spurred by the lost woman's voice, there were many interrogations raised and rattling inside his mind.

"Colonel" he addressed the disembodied voice formally "what's my favorite cake ?" The real Samantha Carter would know that, but it was highly unlikely a foreign interrogator would have questioned her on it.

There was a short, pregnant pause, then "It's lemon cheesecake Sir" came back as tartly as the cake's main ingredient.

The brow furrowed even deeper, then the man's expression relaxed completely, having reached a conclusion. He leaned closer to the com panel.

"Colonel, what's your status ?"

"I've escaped capture after the alien attack, laying low and not transmitting. There are still those alien soldiers patrolling the island, but less than before-"

"Alien soldiers ?" Lefarge cut in.

"Alien, although they look human, using energy weapons. Listen Sir, I don't think I've got much time, I just killed two of them guarding the stargate, I can't believe the rest will be long finding me out - you have to let me in !" she finished with pressing urgency.

There was a struggle inside Frederick Lefarge's head. Her story rang true - or at least paralleled the other escapee's. And if she was on the run, she couldn't afford to linger on the spot. On the other hand, she might unwittingly lead those aggressors here, or she could be carrying a bioweapon unknowingly, who could be sure ?

"Colonel, we're going to come to you. Disengage the gate and a Marine squad will -"

He was cut off in turn, but this time Carter's expression was frantic and underlined with genuine, immediate fear. "I can't Sir- they're coming for me, I hear them ! I have to leave _now_ General ! _Now_ _please I'm begging you !_" she finished on the verge of hysteria.

The man in charge of the colony's destinies muttered a strong curse under his breath. He hated that, hated the situation, hated having to take such a crucial decision on such immediate notice when there were so many variables left in the shadow.

"All right" he exhaled, "Ensign Powell, uncork the gate and let Colonel Carter in under full biological containment. I'll meet her at the medbay. Understood ?"

"Affirmative, proceeding now General."

Down in the gate room the Ensign activated the switch that powered off the translucent force field blocking off the event horizon and signalled the stranded Colonel to come through. At the same time, the waiting party of Marines and servicemen unpacked a portable containment gurney, the clear tough memory plastic inflating to form a sealed bubble ready to transport the incoming person without risk of contamination. The room itself was isolated from the rest of the station's life support system and would be sprayed with a powerful antiseptic afterwards. Naturally, the personnel involved were all wearing CB gear themselves.

The colony's authorities had formalized the whole procedure as soon as personal travel through the stargate was confirmed as possible. There was no telling what kind of diseases could lurk outworld, after all and if one danger hung loudly in the Samothracians' minds, it was the biological risk.

Unfortunately, their notion of "biological risk" eventually proved a little bit too restricted.

Samantha Carter's rematerialization out of the wormhole's end yielded a collective reaction of surprise from the welcoming party indeed. First, she walked out confidently and almost unhurriedly, belying the past urgency of her calls. Then, there was her appearance and a few O-shaped mouths greeted her youthful, glowing physique - no longer the unassuming, if attractive mousy scientist, she carried herself with the poise and erect -haughty, really- stance of a queen, head arrogantly tilted back and seemingly looking down on the men arrayed in front of her, frozen in their tracks as her changed appearance registered. The blonde hair was no longer short, regulation length and carried in a practical, simple straight cut. Instead elaborately braided curls adorned her head like thin chains of gold forming spiraling motifs on her temples, and disappeared under a glittering tiara of ruby-encrusted platinum that was as much a jewel as it was a functional piece of technology like most Goa'uld worn items.

An Egyptian-style application of black khôl made her eyes look larger and wider, shadowed by darkly delineated eyebrows, almost hieratic in shape, and luxurious lashes fanning from contemptuous eyelids in perfect coordination with the tight-lipped, sneering mouth painted in dark, purple-red plum.

Further down were even greater changes. Gone was the Alliance field uniform. Perhaps for the better (in the watching male eyes) it was replaced with a tight body-hugging suit of blood-red, vinyl-like material, smooth and thin enough to hide nothing of the curves beneath it just like a zero-gee tightsuit would, except those were worn underneath another layer of cloth. The Goa'uld garment, on the other hand, seemed to flaunt every little bump, cleft and cranny in a way that was more obscene even than complete nudity.

It disappeared at the neck under a golden, platinum encrusted collar composed of flat interlocking plates fanning over the top of her chest and just barely covering the tip of her breasts. A single, gently glowing ruby-like oval crystal was adorning the central set of plates right under her throat, the concealed emitter for the personal shield she had activated immediately after she set foot on the station.

Braces of a similar construction adorned her forearms, sporting rounded crystalline protrusions that were a copy of Kull blasters, and both hands were girdled in trinium-weave gauntlets containing the kinetic pulse emitter and torture device combination usually disguised as hand jewels among the System Lords.

An articulated golden belt hung asymmetrically from her waist, the lower right side bearing the coiled zat'niktel hugging her thigh. A pair of shock grenades was clipped over the left hip, ready to use.

She stopped a few steps away from the stargate in a lanky, hand on her hip pose, swept the room with an arrogant gaze, and flashed her eyes at the group of gasmasked men before her.

Kheshmet spoke.

"**In the name of Lord Baal, I, Kheshmet claim this station and the lives of its inhabitants. Bow before me, or feel the wrath of the Living Gods !"**

There was a collective "what the fuck" moment, ending with a flurry of raised rifles and the zipping air sound of the shield rushing back to plug the wormhole.

Faced with half a dozen automatic rifles pointed at her, Kheshmet answered with a crooked smile.

"**I take this as a no, then. Good"** she added coolly **"I will take pleasure in washing this station's walls with the blood of your children !"**

Half a dozen rifles began to spit high-velocity armor-piercing fragmentation bullets at her, and the protective forcefield surrounding her person flared into view as it blocked the incoming fire. The soldiers barely had time to think "fuck, what's this ?" before return fire from Kheshmet's blasters tore out smoking chunks from their bodies, ignoring the lightweight ballistic armor, and the following kinetic pulsewaves crashed the dying bodies like so many ragdolls on the far wall, along with the containment gurney which deflated with a bang upon hitting the unyielding surface at high speed.

Ensign Powell did his training proud and used the seconds bought by the death of his comrades well. His thumb jammed down on the red alarm button of his communicator, warning the rest of the station of the sudden attack. It was a redundant gesture, since the Control Center's duty crew monitored everything in the room anyway and was already in the process of raising the general alarm, but he did his duty. It was a small comfort to the Ensign during the agonizing minutes it took him to die after a plasma bolt flash-boiled his intestines.

Of course, by the time he died from shock and blood loss the rapidly decompressing atmosphere would have killed him just as thoroughly by asphyxiation. His blurring sight still managed to catch the intruder in Carter's body deactivate the gate's shield and spare him a scornful, satisfied sneer, the last vision he would take into death.

Kheshmet didn't linger on the quasi-orgasmic release of killing. The blocking forcefield down, she sent the signal for her shock Jaffas to follow and a few seconds later the first rank of armored, helmeted warriors stomped onto Freedom Station's floor. More followed as the first ones took protective positions in front of the room's shut doors, shortened staff weapons crackling, faceless under their extended trinium alloy headgear.

The shock armor, a derivative, improved version of Ra's original Horus Guard folding helmet, was less cumbersome than the oversized, unbalanced design that caused many a Jaffa of old to bump into low hanging ceilings, and easier to fight in. The collar-folded helmet was worn over a coarse trinium alloy mail and vacuum-rated undergarment that complemented its protective virtues, and the design's underlying emphasis on sensible and functional extended to the shortened staff weapon. Easier to wield in close quarters, lighter and just as powerful, if was also linked to the helmet's built-in sensor and targeting grid, allowing a quantum leap on Jaffa firing accuracy.

It was Baal's answer to the introduction of Kull Warriors, Dragon Guards and similar, improved foot soldier design among the Goa'uld. It was still much cheaper than those overly refined designs, and also much less likely to be wielded effectively against its masters. An adequate compromise, the cunning System Lord felt, as long as the current madness lasted. He was already worried by the rumors of Kull armor falling into non-Goa'uld hands, something that, he was sure, would later bite them in their collective ass.

Which, in his assessment, made it even more crucial that he, and he alone, gained control of the literal treasure trove of technology that was a fully functional Alteran installation. With such a mythical, never before encountered windfall of first-hand Founder tech, he might even be able to match Anubis' new designs and take the place of Supreme System Lord. And damn Ra, if the old bastard was even still alive somewhere. His shadow had kept them fretful for far too long already.

Baal -at least the Baal who had dealt with the two humans- would have preferred to put one of the other clones inside the human female's body, but Kheshmet was the next best one and was immediately available. And as a mitigating factor, the Jaffas under her command were fanatically loyal to his person and his person alone.

That, and he was personally leading a Ha'tak battleship to the target system in full agreement with the rest of the Baal collective. The _Divine Fist of Unity_ was a top of the line vessel, able to match an Anubis mothership in raw firepower thanks to its oversized naquadah reactor. It should be overkill against the primitive human ships, since they didn't have control of the station's own weapon systems as the female's mind had revealed.

Inside Freedom Station a pandemonium was beginning to take shape even as internal sensors showed the flood of Jaffas to helpless operators manning the Control Center. They'd watched in dismay the... thing looking like a slutty, Draka-ish Carter with glowy eyes and unnaturally deep voice tear open an access panel and reverse the local life support settings, canceling the forced decompression. Eventually she had even managed to cut off their access to the local sensors, leaving them in the dark as to the invaders' dispositions - and then reports had started to trickle in from panicked, fleeing crewmembers in the surrounding sections.

Armed response teams were organizing and moving towards the infestation as General Lefarge practically ran through the station's passages towards the Center, communicating constantly with the duty controllers, and the thousands of civilians in the habitats were woken abruptly by the stern, dreaded alert message.

"_Attention all military and civilian personnel, the station is under attack, report to your predesignated post at once, repeat, the station is under attack, report to your predesignated post at once !_"

The warning echoed along Freedom Station's corridors, habitats, passageways and maglines, providing an eerie contrast to the otherwise perfectly normal succession of pleasant, serene sights displayed by the holowalls. Running footsteps brought a counterpoint around the vast bulk of the installation as a hundred thousand men, women and children rushed to reach their assigned place. Defensive positions for every adult male and teenager able to bear a weapon, the inner habitats for the mothers and children, where they would hopefully be safe during the coming battle inside hermetically sealed, closed-loop life support environments.

Down in a non-descript intersection, Kheshmet walked slowly, a crooked, cruel smile on her lips and an exaggerated sway on her hips, feeling the rush of crushing inferiors under her heel. A quasi sexual thrill that made every nerve of her extended body tingle, her intimate flesh engorged in blood. A hundred thousand humans to enslave and terrorize, cowering before her, their feeble weapons useless against her might and prowess. She would let the Jaffas streaming forward on both sides of her die and kill and rape, above all die for her as was their condition. They'd always leave enough for her. Yes, she would gorge herself today.

Sweet thoughts on her mind, the blood red woman strode onwards, helmet extended, shield bubble surrounding her, confident and invulnerable.

And deep inside the cold blue eyes the real Samantha Carter kept screaming.

**Baal's domain - **

**Garrison World Maek'nash**

There was nothing he could do. Nothing he hadn't tried already. No exit from the cold cell, two by four meters of rutted stone barely covered by damp rotting straw, rough walls sweating with humidity, a half-clogged hole in one corner overflowing with the stench of shit and piss, and no privacy afforded by the open iron grating that served as the cell's fourth wall. The heavy lock looked crude, but it was brutally robust, and the pair of guards watching him permanently didn't allow any attempt at the bolt. Nor did they answer any call. Stone faced, they stood on the other side of the barrier, backs on the far wall, their eyes following every movement he made, their hand never far from the coiled zat'niktel on their belt and willing to use it at the slightest provocation, as the captive had experienced several times before.

The watchmen didn't even have to fear killing their charge. The sarcophagus upstairs saw to it. That too, O'Neill had experienced, an object lesson that trying to rush the guards when they opened the door could only end in painful failure. Twice.

He'd lost track of the time, of the days passed since the capture and the current time. Underground, the only light came from the torches and nothing marked the passage of hours and minutes, nothing but the change of guards at various intervals. He'd tried to count his own heartbeats, and came to the conclusion that the guard relief happened no sooner than two hours, sometimes four, or at least what seemed like it. Naturally, his watch along with everything he wore had been confiscated the first day, leaving him naked and shivering. The food wasn't very filling, and tasted foul, which was expected in the setting, yet he forced himself to eat all, conserving his strength for… for what ? That was a question without an obvious answer. All he could find was, wait, bide his time, wait for an opportunity.

An opportunity to escape, as preposterous as it looked. Escaping from an unknown building into an unknown planet surrounded by unknown, presumably hostile, people ? Laughable, when he thought it over. But that hope was all he had. A tiny, feeble hope, almost crushed for good by Carter's… transformation, hijacking. If that thing in her head had access to all her memories, there was a high chance that she would indeed fool Freedom Station into allowing her in… a Trojan horse par excellence. And this Kheshmet had indeed gloated about it, gloated about its plans to do exactly that, right before she, it, left him to rot back in that cell. Sneering in that obscene red suit, showing off the clingy material, parading her peeking nipples under his eyes, recalling their perverted deeds with vicious relish and promising more later, promising laughingly to come back covered in the blood of Samothracian children instead. Leaving him, and that laugh trailing her, the laugh of a demon on her way to hell.

He didn't think more than a full day, 24 hours, had gone by since her departure. Her overlord, Baal hadn't apparently bothered to come down and see the prisoner. And nobody else had since bar the guards and the old servant who brought the prison slop.

It was a surprise then, when the endless boring wait ended with a visit. O'Neill heard the sound of footsteps, not the rough-shod beat of the Jaffas, not the shuffling traipse of the servant, but steady subdued steps descending the stairs at the end of the corridor of cells and coming closer. Their source became visible an instant later, preceded by the dancing shadows the visitor projected on the far wall.

The Major's eyes recognized the face in the lopsided flickering light. He'd seen the man before as he was being dragged through the corridors, some kind of flunky or paper-pusher from his looks and attitude. Clean-shaven, a youngish thirty-something appearance, otherwise unremarkable face, brown hair cut short, his suit following his master's pattern, only less ostentatious, almost sober in dark burgundy. It was probably the Goa'uld society's idea of a white-collar look, O'Neill had reflected. He remembered the man's indifferent face as he was dragged by the Jaffas, as if it were a common enough occurrence, something you tended to notice but forgot immediately afterwards. Maybe he'd mentioned it to his colleagues at the alien coffee machine, nothing more.

Then what was the guy doing here in the dungeon ? Was he bored and looking at tormenting the captive for fun and giggles ?

The Major's eyes perked up, catching the harsh-sounding words exchanged by the newcomer and his guards. He didn't understand the words, and the Jaffas' tone was desperately, monotonously, almost comically constant, an air of being preternaturally, angrily constipated.

He eyed the body language as the exchange developed. Office Guy seemed irritated, the Logo Heads seemed to be stonewalling a request, maybe they had orders not to let any flunky toy with the Master's personal whipping boy ?

In any case the argument came to an end, the Jaffas having apparently told "no" as politely as it came to them, Office Guy making a frustrated face, shrugging, bringing his hands up in a "fuck this" gesture, and turning to leave.

O'Neill relaxed and slumped back against the wall. The interlude was over, who knew how long he'd wait for the next break in his boredom ?

What happened ten minutes later did break his half-doze. One moment the guards were standing, the only sounds those of the torches crackling faintly and the distant muffled squeak of rats, and then two detonations banged loudly in the confined space, in quick succession, his ears identifying them as gun reports immediately.

An assessment readily confirmed as both guards' heads exploded outwards one after the other, spraying bloody chunks of brains on the wall.

His eyes went wide as the two brawny warriors collapsed down, trailing each a vertical line of blood on the stone. And then Office Guy reappeared, stepping quickly and silently into the prisoner's field of vision, a gun - an Alliance gun - gripped in both hands, his expression focused, eyes darting and scanning.

O'Neill's jaw dropped.

The newcomer kicked both dead bodies to make sure they didn't move, then lowered the gun and faced the cell. And spoke hurriedly, in broken, accented English :

"You, there, with me, come !"

"_What ?_" was all the captive managed to say, duly flabbergasted by the turn of events.

"I free you, you come" Office Guy, who now looked a lot less like a paper-pusher, repeated.

"Who the hell are you ?" O'Neill shot back. Escape was a wonderful thing, but there was a million questions stampeding in his mind.

His would-be savior made an impatient gesture, shook his head, then took a step sideways and pointed the guy straight at the lock. He pressed the trigger a third time, and the shot rang again painfully inside the low ceilinged space. At least this time O'Neill had time to cover his ears. The heavy bullet smashed the lock and cracked the door open, and Office-Commando Guy kicked it clear before waving the cell's occupant out.

"We need to hurry ! Now, come !" he called again, urgently, and O'Neill remarked that his liberator's speech was improving, his accent thinning and the words flowing more freely. Rising up, he asked another question.

"How come you're speaking my tongue ?"

"I had… aid, device, to learn" the other man explained, then resumed his urgent prodding, looking from side to side. "We really need to go now, those chemical slugthrowers of yours won't trip the palace sensors as energy weapons would, but they're _loud !_ Quick before someone comes to investigate !"

"Right, but… -" "I'll answer your questions later, Major O'Neill, but first we need to leave this place ! Follow me _now _!"

_He knows my name too ?_ the officer thought even as he crossed the space between his former slumping corner to the cell's door. Seeing that his rescue was finally consenting to move, the mysterious rescuer turned and started up the corridor, gun extended.

They didn't meet anyone climbing the revolving stairs, and out in the next dark passage, until the second intersection where the fugitives met another pair of Jaffas plodding towards them. The gun barked again twice, and O'Neill silently commended his rescuer's aim. Of course, the Colt Hi-Power with holographic aimpoint was an easy pistol to shoot things with, but still, he doubted the alien had used one previously.

The palace seemed mercifully deserted and O'Neill commented about it after five more minutes going from corridor to empty rooms.

"Most of the garrison is out with Kheshmet" the alien explained matter of factly. "Attacking the rest of your people."

_Shit_.

"Baal wants the technology you found, and that's why I had to act" Office Commando added, perhaps sensing the ex-prisoner's unease.

"Who are you then, some kind of spy ?" O'Neill called after the other's back. A backwards glance, and "In a way. Keep quiet now". The Earther shrugged. Here he was, trusting a complete stranger, and he was still naked too. At least the activity kept him from getting cold.

The stranger paused at the end of another hallway, and stuck his ear against a metal-reinforced wooden door. They were still under the ground level, but out of the crudest part of the maze-like stone palace. There was a stillness in the deserted rooms. It was night outside, the alien had mentioned, the rest of the people were sleeping, which made sense for an escape attempt.

After a dozen seconds he straightened up and pulled a heavy brass key from a pocket, which he used to unlock the door. It pivoted aside with barely a squeak and the sort-of-spy beckoned O'Neill to enter. It was a rectangular room, some kind of storage closet lined with wood shelves covered in shapes indistinct in the dim glow of the closest torch.

There was a faint _click_ and reddish light spilled out of a ring on the alien man's left hand, allowing the runaway captive to see. And his heart leapt in joy.

Strewn before his eyes were his battledress, neatly folded, his perscomp, rifle and ammunition. He felt like squealing in pleasure.

"Take that, put them on the bag here" Office Commando said, dousing out the moment of elation. "No time to waste, we need to leave the place fast !" He emphasized the fact by grabbing some of the gear and shoving it inside the sack, short-circuiting any protestation. They were both out half a minute later, and continued their trek upstairs where the sound of conversation drifted to their ears. Not Jaffa voices. Servants, from all appearances. And they were blocking their egress.

O'Neill watched his companion draw a narrow blade from his sleeve, and his eyes widened in realization. He wasn't going to object, though, and merely stood there as the other man walked forward into the light, acting naturally until he was close to the pair of chatting servants, who stopped talking and straightened in expected obedience. Obviously Office Man was worthy of the underlings' respect, the Major observed.

Unfortunately for them, they shouldn't have stayed up late. There was a rapid, economical series of stabs delivered coldly and clinically. Both victims fell dead almost before they could realize their fate and the OSS agent silently commended the assassin's technique, following him and sparing a detached glance at the bodies, who had an expression of surprise, more than pain, on their face.

Another minute and they reached the last door, which the spy-assassin opened carefully, cracking it first to peer out, then a little wider, just enough for passage. The exterior was dark and cold, with a frisk breeze that raised goosebumps on O'Neill's unprotected skin, and a layer of snow seemed to deaden every sound. The door opened on a small elevated stairway in a corner of a vast interior courtyard, enclosed by tall crenellations, dark ribbons of stone that merged with the blackness of night, and the only light sources were two pinpricks of fire at the other end where a larger set of gates were currently closed.

There was no sign of sentries, possibly because none wanted to stay out in the freezing air, or perhaps because they were facing outwards, not inwards. In any case, O'Neill saw why his guide had led them here. Down in the courtyard laid three dark, sleek shapes, roughly pyramidal with flowing curves. Starships, he realized. Smaller than those who had attacked Mara Nui, but the parentage couldn't be denied.

He followed his unlikely rescuer down the small stairs and jogged, half crouched, towards the closest ship.

"Not this one" Office Commando hissed, pointing away, "follow me !"

He'd apparently selected the second one for reasons O'Neill could only guess. A tap on a recessed panel on the sloping side of the dark grey craft, and a hatch opened, allowing them to leave the exposed surface of the courtyard. The door closed, cutting out the chill and the naked man began to rub his flanks vigorously, staring around. He was standing in an empty space, a cargo hold probably given the lack of furnishing - save for the gilded walls. Panels of hieroglyphs interrupted the starkness of the blue-grey alloy used on the hull, which gave the thing a preposterous aura. _Hieroglyphs ? In a space ship ? _ Just another question to answer later, he shrugged.

In the meantime, his fellow escapee had disappeared forward, into what was obviously the cockpit of the ship. Passing through the partition, the Earther remarked a hole in the bulkhead where a small panel had been removed, and peeking closer he caught the glint of colored crystals, only it was blackened and dulled, giving the distinct impression of a blown circuit. It was more than he could determine anyway.

Interior lights came on as he entered the cockpit himself, and found his companion already seated in one of the two crew stations, tapping panels and bringing the ship's system up. A soft hum signalled the engines coming to life, and a hologram sprung out in front of the pilot.

"Take a seat, we're leaving" the other man said without looking.

The Major did so, eyes trying to take in all the sights, alien ship, glowy panels, cryptic indicators and all, and almost as soon as his bottom touched the seat's soft surface the spacecraft lifted, doing so without so much as a vibration and only the very faintest feeling of acceleration.

They climbed over the palace's obscured sprawl, then another flat hologram came up, displaying the tattooed head of a Jaffa who immediately proceeded to spout a stream of words that sounded very much like the equivalent of "Oi you, what do you think you're doing ?", followed by a flustered look at receiving a raised middle finger in reply, and then another stream of words ending in "…_ SHO'LVAH !_"

It seemed to be the cue for O'Neill's decidedly multi-talented neighbor to bring out a small device from his suit and press a crystalline stud. Any question the Major would have raised was rendered superfluous when the cockpit was illuminated by a brilliant flash coming from below, prompting him to look over the side window and see, far under and behind the fleeing craft, an expanding fireball right over the spot where the castle would have been. It was a good thing they were already far away, because it was a very big fireball.

Very unsurprisingly, the Jaffa's head was also cut off.

Only then did the mysterious stranger turn his head and stare at him, with an "all right, now we can talk" kind of air. And O'Neill nearly jumped out of the seat when the man's eyes flashed gold, and his normal, human voice give way to a deep, oddly distorted one.

"**You must have many questions, Major O'Neill, but first"** he smiled, a genuine, friendly, human smile, "**my name is Selmak, and I'm **_**not **_**a Goa'uld."**

"If by 'Goa'uld' you mean 'guy with flashy eyes, distorted voice and weird lifestyle' like those Baal and Kheshmet fellows, then who, or what are you ?" Perplexity, distrust and a bit of sarcasm tainted the Major's voice, and his body posture - squeezed in the seat as far away from his neighbour as possible - made it clear that Selmak's flashy demonstration didn't exactly make him at ease. "It's funny but I can't keep myself from thinking you might have one of those ugly snake-things in your head too." He finished crossing his arms. The bag containing his gear and weapon was back in the cargo compartment, and he really wished he had his gun now.

His interlocutor chuckled apologetically and then answered in his human voice.

"Yes, I can see why you'd be suspicious, although I wouldn't refer to Selmak as an ugly snake-thing". He tapped his temple. "He is a Tok'ra, biologically the same species as the Goa'uld, but… much nicer and saner. In fact, the Tok'ra and the Goa'uld hate each other."

"What," O'Neill stared with narrow eyes "who's speaking ?"

"I'm Garam, the… let's say, original owner of this body. Selmak's host."

"Like you've got a say ? How do I know you're not just a puppet like Sam was ?" the Earther's tone was animated, still disbelieving, tinged with all the tension he was just beginning to release after the escape.

"Well, that's the difference between Tok'ra and Goa'uld. The Tok'ra hate slavery, and they only take volunteer hosts. And we're sharing, it is in every sense a true symbioic relationship. I was not forced to become Selmak's host, and I don't regret it the slightest bit. I can't prove it to you, but I'm not Selmak's slave."

"I… see but don't expect me to take your word for it. It could all be bullshit, a trap to make me trust you !"

"In your position, I'd think likewise, Major O'Neill. And I'm not asking you to trust me blindly… but Selmak and I did take a big risk to rescue you."

"Yes, and why not sooner, before Carter was, was…" he didn't finish the sentence.

"Because we couldn't, and to tell you the truth it was only later, when we learnt what exactly was involved, that we understood how important it was not to allow Baal and Kheshmet to get away with it -"

"Oh, I see" O'Neill interrupted "at first we were just some dumb humans being tortured for fun and giggles, but once it became clear that the guys you were spying on would soon acquire an enormous advantage, you had to act."

Garam stared at him levelly and answered after a moment.

"Yes. You have to understand, the stakes are…-"

"Yes I do, some kind of galactic game between those System Lords and you Tok'ra people, and compared to that the personal fate of two unlucky humans wasn't important enough. I gathered as much."

Behind the sarcastic tone there was true understanding in the OSS man's mind. He was recognizing this Garam, or Selmak, person to be something like his alien professional peer. A dangerous person, one that served a goal, had a duty, and was prepared to go to extreme ways to accomplish it. But all the same this might make him an ally in the present circumstances. And he had rescued him from Baal's clutches, after all, which was worth some measure of goodwill.

As Selmak didn't answer immediately, apparently content to just wait his companion's mental process out, O'Neill eventually spoke again.

"All right, so we're in the same boat so far. What's next ?" and the underlying, _do you have a plan ?_

"First, we make a stop at a safe place."

The naked man raised his brows, and watched the pilot input something into the ship's controls. A couple seconds later there was a small shudder, and the star-speckled black veil of ordinary space was replaced by a swirling tunnel of blue light as the hijacked Tel'tak jumped into hyperspace.

"We'll follow a deception vector until we're clear out of hypertracking range, then swing towards our true destination. In the meantime, why don't you take a shower and dress up ?"

O'Neill nodded, and began to rise from his seat. "There's a shower on this ship ?"

"Of course. Travel time can easily involve days, even weeks. It's the door across the cargo deck. Just call me if you have trouble with the controls, I'm staying here just in case Baal's boys try to follow our trace."

"Is that likely ?" the moving man asked over his shoulder.

"Not really. There's a sizable pursuit squadron in orbit, but, well… the duty controller suffered an unfortunate accident before he could tag us as hostile to the defense grid" Selmak smirked, and his interlocutor chuckled back, remembering the massive fireball incinerating Baal's palace and the Jaffa garrison. He started to move again, then paused "By the way, why this ship…?" _and not the first one ?_

"Simple. I had already removed the locator beacon on this ship and deactivated the call-back circuit. And tampered with the other ships' reactor safeties" the Tok'ra agent explained.

The clarification raised a lopsided grin on O'Neill's face.

"Glad to be working with a professional."

**Freedom Station, Samothrace System**

**Same time**

They were losing, Frederick Lefarge realized. It was the inescapable conclusion to be drawn from the steady progression of the invading force, a progression that could be followed almost in real time as sectors of the vast artificial construct went dark on the tridimensional representation rotating slowly in the Control Center's holotank.

His men, operating the alien consoles were trying to slow the attackers down, shutting down local environmental systems, sealing blast doors, cutting off access everywhere the centralized damage control system allowed them. They were merely delaying the enemy's advance, as they were proving adept at overriding or bypassing the station's decentralized control nodes and hacking the doors open.

His response teams had started to weld them shut, but this was only prompting their opponents to use breaching charges, or try another way in. And there was always one in the sprawling assembly of communicating compartments, passages, vertical access shafts and maintenance crawlways that made up the station's internal structure.

Worse, the response teams were too few, far too few to have a hope in hell of covering every possible avenue of approach, and the invaders had the initiative. They had the luxury of a seemingly never-ending supply of combatants, and they kept coming despite their casualties, relentlessly.

And casualties were mounting on the Samothracian side. The _New America_ had left Sol with nothing more than a Marine security company, and half their number was already dead, missing or incapacitated, having sold their lives dearly to slow the invasion. But no matter how many they killed, there were more to come. The teams were being shored up with Navy and civilian personnel using salvaged weapons, for the colony had not expected to fight a war at their planned destination, and as such the stock of man-portable weapons was extremely limited.

It was a cruel irony, considering that the ships themselves had the firepower to annihilate any number of foot soldiers… if only they could bring their weapons to bear. It had happened only once, when a group of enemies had forced open the great ship bay's main access. Nearly a hundred of the mail-clad soldiers had spilled on the football stadium sized central terrace like ants on a patch of concrete, in their haste to gain control of the cavernous hangar and the docked Alteran space crafts.

They hadn't counted on the pair of Alliance cruisers moored inside the zero-gee bay and their laser batteries. And thus they were flash-cooked in seconds as the powerful beams swept the flat surface clean, and the warships had since managed to interdict the bay, beating off a couple more infiltration attempts with railgun slugs and laser pulses cued by their all-seeing infrared eyes.

But even that localized success couldn't hide the larger, bleaker, situation. If the station was lost, the ships would have nowhere to go, and anyway the bulk of the colonists were already cut off from the exterior, effectively besieged by the attackers who were progressing through the external maglev rings to spread around the station's periphery, only limited by the speed at which they could run and override the blast doors delimiting the main sectors.

And for the last hours they'd been heading inwards, towards the inner inhabited sections of the station. Towards the staggered, concentric rings of self-contained habitats.

"Get that fucking door sealed tight, those bastards are right behind us !" Corporal Rodrigo Brackman snarled loudly as he crossed the threshold of the thick, vacuum-rated hatch separating two main hull subdivisions. They were deep inside the station, into the living districts, and the walls were, somewhat infuriatingly, still displaying their serene recreation of mountainous meadows somewhere in the galaxy. It could have been Earth, but for the twin suns shining down upon the bright green grass, and the lack of cows which, to the Corporal's eyes, ought to adorn such a bucolic scene.

And the contrast made the present situation almost surreal, fighting for their lives against a ruthless, faceless enemy.

He paused right inside the massive door's threshold, just long enough to grab the last member of his team and pull him energetically through the already closing twin slabs of alloy. The other three team members were already inside, covering the doorway with rifles and pistol, the latter belonging to the civilian engineer who had replaced a Marine killed ten minutes ago.

Brackman waited until the gap was completely closed and took three steps back, allowing the Navy crewman with the plasma torch to step in and begin to weld the joined metal lips.

By chance, those internal doors were made of a steel-based alloy instead of the more exotic hull material and the Earth-designed tool was having and effect on it.

It left time for the fighters to do an ammunition check, and it was bleak. Five magazines for the three rifles, two reloads for the pistol, and no more grenades. These were all expended during the past hours fighting a retreat through Freedom Station's external sections. And it wasn't just the ammo. The Corporal had started the fight under the authority of a Master Sergeant who was now dead, his head blasted open by one of those god-damned plasma rounds the invaders used, and two more Fleet men had fought alongside them as well before meeting their end.

The welding torch had just travelled ten centimeters down when a buzz came from the wall-mounted control panel, indicating that someone was trying to get the doors open on the other side. The technician gingerly jumped back and extinguished his flame, and all was quiet for a short time. Until a deep, almost subterranean-sounding _boom_ sounded off from the alloy panels, like a muffled gong.

"Shit they're going to burn through already, fuck fuck fuck" Brackman spat "everyone move back to the next intersection, go!"

More _booms_ followed, and the interlocking panels of metal began to glow red around the centrally mounted locking mechanism, deforming and buckling under the superheated plasma's assault. Half a minute of almost continuous fire fatally weakened the structure until it failed catastrophically, the nearly-molten disk of wrought alloy exploding out of its slot like a fireball to ricochet on the wall with a shower of sparks, leaving an ugly trail of molten droplets and a blackened, crackled spot on the holowall's no longer pristine surface. The out-of-control piece of metal finished its course a dozen meters away, where it started to cool down with various sizzling sounds.

A bitter hack of coughing came from the civilian. Without the Marine's breathing filters, he'd involuntarily inhaled a whiff of the toxic metal fumes coming from the molten door fragments.

Brackman spared the teary-eyed, coughing man a quick look, but didn't have time to do anything for him. A barrage of plasma bolts tore through the corridor from the hole in the door, where one of the Jaffas was laying down suppressive fire, walking it from left to right blindly but effectively enough. The noise reverberated inside the close space, the sound of plasma bolts tearing through the air and superheating it along their path like ripping cloth and the splashing _cracks_ when they impacted a solid surface, melting furrows along the walls and floor and leaving dead, blackened smears onto the no-longer pristine virtual scenery.

The gunner's comrades used the distraction to brace against the door halves and muscle them apart, the weakened weld offering no more resistance than a hardened lump of chewing gum. More weapons began to fire through the crack to keep the suppression going, firing somewhat more deliberately now that the warriors could see a little where the fire was going. But it was a two-way street now and the Marines used their helmet sights to fire accurate bursts, keeping their bodies behind cover and firing the rifles around the corners, ignoring the scorching plasma whizzing past and splashing on the walls around them, unconcerned by the rising ambient heat that was beginning to burn unprotected skin.

Their focus was rewarded by cries from behind the half-opened doors and a drop in the volume of incoming fire. The Corporal instantly recognized the lull in the suppressive rain of plasma.

"Get ready to move" he shouted to the cowering, heat-burned civilian and the Fleet man. "Through that side passage" he gestured energetically at the far end of the intersecting cross-corridor, across from his own corner "get it open and ready for us when we disengage!"

The Fleet-uniformed tech nodded and began to pull the other man out with a guiding hand. Brackman glanced back at the destroyed doorway through his rifle sight and squeezed a quick three-round burst at a moving shadow behind the semi-retracted alloy panels. He saw it stagger and fall, and bared his teeth. _One more dead fucker._

The next Jaffas didn't try to aim through the crack and simply resumed their blind suppressive fire, content to sit tight behind the protective slabs and pour bolts in the general direction of the defending soldiers. They'd lost enough of their number, either outright dead, their flesh shredded by the razor-sharp fragmenting crystal bullets beyond the ability of their symbiote to heal, or grievously wounded. The former were unceremoniously dragged out of the way to await a funeral detail, the latter were pulled back to the nearest cover and left there for their augmented physiology to stabilize itself before evacuation.

Similar scenes were repeated around the station's interior, and floors that had remained sterile for millions of years were now streaked with running blood and gore belonging to attackers and defenders alike.

As the Marines continued to answer the Jaffas' fire, albeit shooting sparingly to extend their remaining ammunition, Brackman tried to think the team's next steps. They'd been falling back steadily, trading ground for time or so they were hoping. He didn't want to think about that. He glanced at the color-coded location markings of the intersection. They had retreated towards the center, a distance equivalent to three magline stops. Except it had taken hours in the maze of intricate compartments and passages between the main thoroughfares. He didn't even have an idea where the next defending group was, too many metal interfering and not enough relay transmitters. He'd stick to the plan then, continue to retreat and slow the invaders until they reached the first habitat ring. There should be a defense line there, or at least someone to join with.

Maybe they should have done this earlier, he reflected. Trying to hold such a perimeter with so few men was a mistake, they should have pulled back the core sections to mount a denser resistance. But then, hindsight was always perfect, and they couldn't have expected the invaders to hack through the remote systems so easily. Attempting to contain them where they'd first appeared, at the gate room, had been a logical choice… but it had horribly backfired when the enemy had broken out of the cordon and overwhelmed the little force on site.

Of course he was just a Corporal, maybe the higher-ups in the Control Center had a better idea of the situation. But it still felt like shit to him.

His peripheral vision caught the Navy tech waving at him. Certainly the signal to pull out. The spacer was standing near the far door panel, which led to a hydroponics installation if his memory served him right. At least plants were easy to identify, unlike some of the arcane glowy stuff inside most rooms in the outer station. The civilian man was still coughing, it seemed, prostrated on his ass and apparently even more miserable than everyone else.

_Remember kids, smoking's bad for your lungs!_ The thought rising up incongruously in his mind made him snicker.

And then his face froze mid-grin under the helmet. The far door had just skidded open, and Brackman watched, almost distantly from shock and surprise, as two of the mail-clad invaders fired their staff-looking weapons directly at the surprised Samothracians. As if in slow motion, the Fleet tech's belly exploded out as plasma superheated his entrails and forced them to burst out messily from his ruined one-piece working suit. Blood sprayed on the holowall, tainting the virtual grass red and the mortally wounded man stumbled forward, towards Brackman, eyes bulging and face contorted in astonishment more than pain before his legs gave. His body seemed to crumple down, the shattered spine no longer supporting the weight of his torso upright and letting it fold down and follow the glistening bundle of intestines smearing themselves on the floor.

The hapless man was already dying when the Jaffa pointed his weapon down and fired again, spreading cooked bits of bone and brains everywhere.

The Corporal reacted at last, and began to raise his rifle in the direction of the unexpected assault. Adrenaline flooding his mind made everything seem slower, his weapon rising, the other distant warrior pumping a bolt of plasma through the terrorized civilian's head right after the tech's messy put-down, the hint of greenery behind them, behind the rest of the warriors following the first pair stepping across the doorway.

He fired two bursts in quick succession and the two lead Jaffas stopped in their tracks as crystalline shards scythed through their own insides. Behind them their comrades had their own staff guns ready and their plasma fire crossed the intervening distance even as more Earth-manufactured projectiles streaked the other way.

Brackman saw two more of the bastards drop and then the returning fire began to hit, all in the span of a few seconds. A first plasma bolt struck the far Marine in the flank as he continued firing down the main corridor and he cried out in shock as the fiery ionized matter burnt through his light armor. Out of balance, he unconsciously stumbled sideways, right into the open and another bolt struck him face-on. The kinetic force of the blast made him stagger back and drop his rifle. The metallic clatter was covered by the scream just coming now as pain caught up with the soldier's central nervous system. The next hit might have been a mercy, whether by random or deliberate aiming it struck right in the Marine's face, shatter-melting the bullet-proof plastic and scorching away the skin from the skull. It was a dying and smoking body that fell backwards, not to move again.

The other Marine snap-crouched aside behind his corner as his colleague died and switched his fire to the new group of Jaffas, supplementing Brackman's own outgoing fusillade. More Jaffas fell but more took their place and they were facing two outnumbered men.

Brackman's ammo cassette ran out and his drilled hand moved without conscious reflexion to snatch a full magazine even as the empty one ejected from the rifle. He was fast, and the new cassette slotted in place a fraction of a section later, but there was no miracle that day. One man's speed couldn't nullify the number facing him not the volume of fire aimed at him. A plasma bolt grazed his elbow, the burning sensation making him flinch and ruin his aim. His first burst went wide, striking sparks against the far walls instead of hitting the Jaffas in the distance. Another bolt followed and went true, hitting him center. His rifle seemed to explode in his face and his arms flew apart out of the burning impact, and he fell back out of balance. The corner of his eye caught his last living Marine firing full-auto at the mass of targets, hoping to kill them before they killed him and very nearly succeeding, a half-dozen mail-clad warriors staggering out of the fight dead or too wounded to continue.

Any elation was squashed in the bud in instant later when the Marine's magazine ran out just as a staff weapon was extended around the corner, held by some Jaffa who had run down the main passage when he'd realized no more suppressive fire was coming from the defenders. He fired blind, trusting proximity and the Gods' luck to find a target, and the Gods indeed seemed to favor him.

The Marine staggered back as plasma flash-boiled his light chest armor, and then more Jaffas appeared from the distant hydroponics doorway, firing their staff guns as they jogged in. The flurry of bolts tore into the still-standing Marine, over Brackman's prone form and a sharp tremor conducted through the floor told the Corporal his last man had fallen.

Dazed, burned and wounded the Marine NCO tried to rise, cursing the hands that wouldn't support him, their flesh charred to the bones. Trampling footsteps rushed towards him, surrounded him, and he saw one of the enemy warriors towering above him. A staff butt slammed down, cracking his weakened face shield and visor and pounding the back of his cranium back to the hard floor.

Through the cracked and deformed ballistic plastic and the film of blood coating his eyes Brackman saw the same staff rise again and turn around between its owner's hands.

_Shit, that's how it ends._ Knowledge of his impending death brought memories and visions flashing forward. One in particular, a face, a beautiful face, golden skin and dark curls, as dark as her eyes, just as he'd last seen her this morning.

_I love you Cristina. _

There was a last flash, and then nothing mattered to Rodrigo Brackman any more.

**Baal's domain**

**Unregistered system**

The Tel'tak shuddered out of hyperspace right on the precise instant calculated by its navigation logic in order to reappear in real space precisely where it was supposed to, that is a few thousand kilometers from a dark and unremarkable rock floating in orbit around an equally unremarkable giant ball of gas. Unremarkable in the sense that it was one among billions in the galaxy, naturally. Seen through the small transport's viewport, it still made a majestic sight of orange-red swirls and eddies and clouds that were the size of continents despite their apparent scale.

Jack O'Neill found himself looking for the Great Red Spot, and found a couple small ones on the illuminated side of the planet's terminator line. Well, it wasn't Jupiter for sure. The holographic projection that sprung up distracted him, highlighting a region of black emptiness outside.

"There's our destination" Selmak commented for the Earther's benefit, but kept his attention fixated on the visual interface. A second later, the field of view shifted minutely as the spacecraft adjusted its course.

"I can't see anything" O'Neill complained.

"Because it's currently in the planet's shadow. Don't worry we'll be there in a couple minutes, there's no atmosphere here to limit our acceleration."

A nod answered. There was no telling what the ship's exact performance was since everything was labeled in those pseudo-Egyptian glyphs he couldn't understand, but what he could see was already head-turning. Not least because it actually travelled faster than light and was smaller than one of the New America's transorbital shuttles.

More comfortable as well. It did have internal gravity and a recognizable, fully functional bathroom, albeit some specific details were not arranged in a way familiar to an Earth-born user. In any case, he was refreshed and dressed again in his Alliance uniform, having verified that the built-in perscomp and communicator was still functional.

And he wasn't naked any more. Thinking back on what Selmak had told him of the Tok'ra, and the way they apparently moved host without necessarily keeping to the same gender, the whole thing was just a little bit too queer for comfort. Not that his present companion had exhibited any sign of un-professional behavior, but still.

A few minutes went by in silence, and eventually the ship's destination became visible to the naked eye. It was dark, almost invisible, blotting out the stars as it grew ever larger until it filled the viewscreen. It was notoriously hard to get a sense of scale in space, but that rock had to span tens of kilometers across, which was a piddle distance in astronomical terms but still imposing when viewed from up-close, and the overall darkness blurring the limits made it look even more looming, almost foreboding.

The holoplot had switched to a close mapping grid and the ship was creeping towards a golden dot that marked the end of its course. A final glide and it was there, and the field of view swung around as the Tel'tak realigned itself so that its belly faced the rock's surface.

Selmak put the ship on station-keeping mode and rose from his chair.

"There we are. Come with me."

The blinding white light dissipated and O'Neill caught the same set of floating horizontal rings flying down to the floor where they disappeared from sight. He didn't feel anything - maybe a minute prickling, but he wasn't sure. It might be his mind inventing things.

The teleporter - for that's what it was - had deposited both men in the middle of a low-ceiling circular room, and a remarkable room it was, as if carved from a forest of blue-purple crystal. The walls were crystalline, the floor, the ceiling - everything made of some extruded, translucent, glittering crystal-like material, like some geological wonder. The surface was smooth though instead of the jagged surface he'd have expected, and offered no tricky steps to stumble and trip on despite the diffracted light playing tricks in the material's thickness.

There was an opening in the wall leading to a corridor.

"This way." O'Neill followed the Tok'ra operative, glancing and gaping at the peculiar environment. "So we're inside that asteroid, huh?" Selmak nodded without slowing. "Some kind of secret base of yours?" This time Selmak looked back. "Something like that."

The tunnel led to another room and unlike the first, this one was filled with containers and random-looking objects. On one of the walls a rack held various weapons, all of them apparently belonging to different types and even worlds. Some of them looked like Eurasian War era rifles, stamped metal and wooden grips, yet on closer inspection they didn't belong to Earth's history at all. Others were made of obviously synthetic materials, polymers and crystals and sleek alloys, and some looked absolutely terrible as practical weapons.

O'Neill pointed at the most unergonomic-looking one, a cross between a handheld shower head and a pistol, except the grip angle was all wrong for accuracy and there was absolutely no visible sight. "What's this ?"

Selmak spared a side-glance and replied without a further look. "A phase pistol, built by the long-gone United Planets Federation. An antique, I think it's about three centuries old. Of course, I never used it, even the Jaffas' staff weapon's better designed" he ended in a contemptuous tone.

"What happened to that Federation? Who were they?" the Earther went on, his curiosity too strong to contain.

The Tok'ra froze mid-motion over an opened chest, appearing to think about it.

"I never dealt directly with them, but from what I learnt they were a multi-planet political entity, hence the name, populated by humans like you as well as a number of humanoid, alien species. They had interstellar travel capability, obviously, and one day they met Sokar, one of the System Lords" He paused, eyes unfocused. "They were a well-meaning, if naïve people, and they tried to negotiate with Sokar." A sharp laugh escaped Selmak's lips. "The fools! Sokar didn't negotiate, of course. He disabled the Federation ship and sent his Jaffas to board it. They slaughtered the remaining crew and Sokar found the location of the Federation worlds inside the computers."

"Sounds like they had terrible infosec" the OSS agent commented.

"As I said, they were a naïve and pacifistic people. Although possessing commendably advanced technology, their use of it was not optimal especially when it came to war."

"I take it they paid dearly for that."

"Yes. Sokar destroyed their remaining fleet and laid waste to their worlds, not bothering to enslave them as they were too advanced to believe the Goa'ulds' delusions of godhood." His voice took a faint tinge of melancholy. "Now this antique might be all that remains of their civilization" he finished, returning to his search.

O'Neill found himself digesting the information. Knowing the fate of the Feddies didn't exactly fill him with optimism.

He looked around, unable to shrug off a feeling of helplessness. Here he was in an alien spy's secret den, facing the forces of an interstellar tyrant, cut off from his own people who were probably now fighting for their lives against his invading minions. And Samantha Carter, prisoner inside her own mind, a puppet forced to accomplish shameful acts against her will. And his, although in other circumstances he might well have repeated those acts willingly. Considering the events of the past months and the succession of mind-shattering discoveries they represented, there was even a good excuse to just freak out and yell obscenities at the universe. And maybe he'd do that later, too, but for the time being he was on a mission. A desperate-looking one, sure, but it still focused his mind on something worthwhile.

Selmak's rummaging eventually produced a metallic sphere, etched in elegant curvy motifs and a little larger than a baseball in size. Holding it on his outstretched palm, he mentally sent a command and the long range communicator activated.

"Whoa!" a surprised O'Neill blurted out. A holographic projection had just sprung above the sphere, at first a white emptiness until a few seconds later, when the destination device sent back its own captured image from a thousand light years away.

A disembodied woman's head floated inside the holopicture, hair black and falling behind the shoulders, a mature face, attractive in a severe way, eyes steady and penetrative. The look of an experienced leader. Upon recognizing her caller she raised her brow and addressed him in Goa'uld.

"Selmak! I hope you have a good reason to break the comm silence. What happened to your mission?"

Selmak shot a "now be quiet and let me talk" glance at the Earther and then answered the floating head, switching to the Goa'uld tongue as well.

"Executive Garshaw. There has been an unexpected development…" an abridged explanation of the last days followed "...the perspective of Baal acquiring a large intact and functioning Ancient installation seemed to justify breaking my cover and acting to prevent it."

"I see. Your reasoning seems valid indeed, this is an extraordinary situation and something has to be done. We cannot allow Baal, or any other System Lord, to capture such an incredible find. Who knows what kind of technology lies inside this station? One Anubis is more than enough!"

Selmak nodded gravely. Despite the lack of conclusive proof it was widely believed among both Goa'uld and Tok'ra that Anubis' recent and successful comeback was due to his finding previously unknown artifacts of the Gate-Builders.

"Do you think it's another Dakara?"

Garshaw shook her head indecisively.

"We never knew what exactly was on Dakara, except that Anubis wanted it and wanted it very badly. We managed to manipulate the Coalition to destroy that mountain and everything inside out of fear. But this is different. An intact Gatebuilder station is something the System Lords will try to capture, not destroy." She sighed. "Unfortunately, Selmak, you're the only asset we have in position to do something about it. Baal's domain always proved most difficult to infiltrate successfully."

The male Tok'ra nodded again. "There is the problem of the humans there."

"They're unfortunate" Garshaw's expression was controlled and determined "but it is paramount that neither Baal nor any other Goa'uld ends up in control of that station. Everything else is secondary: if there is no other choice but to destroy it entirely, then do it, is that clear?"

"Clear, Executive." The operative's voice didn't waver and he met his superior's gaze levelly. "Mission goes first."

Garshaw's head bowed fractionally in response, and then the holographic link was cut.

The communicator went back into the chest, and Selmak answered his companion's wordless interrogation even as he began to gather various objects in the room.

"I checked in with my superiors. I have, as you say…" he paused, fumbling with the foreign, unfamiliar expression "carte blanche to prevent Baal from taking control of Freedom Station."

"Does that mean you're going to blow it up before he gets it?" O'Neill interjected, arms crossed on his chest. Selmak froze an instant, then decided to answer honestly and met the Earther's stare.

"Yes. If it's the only way." His judgment of O'Neill proved accurate.

"I understand. I'd do the same as well, but-" the Major stammered out the last part "I'll do everything I can to save my people first. Are we clear on that?"

"Very clear, Major O'Neill. It is my hope too that we can save them… but long experience taught me not to expect any miracle."

"Well, Mister Selmak, I might not be as old as you are, but I've seen strange enough things in my days."

**Freedom Station**

**Samothrace System**

There was a sick feeling in General Lefarge's stomach as he watched the surveillance feed. The invaders were barely slowed by resistance - in fact, the sheer distances involved in penetrating the vast construct had had more effect than the Marines' sacrifice. There seemed to be no end in sight to the number of mail-clad warriors advancing down the passages and living spaces of the besieged colony and the last hour had seen the defense collapse under the pressure. There were literally not enough defenders left to mount a resistance outside a few ultimate fallback points near the station's heart and the Control Center it contained like a seed inside an apples' core. Maybe if they'd done this right at the beginning of the attack, regrouping in the center inside of trying to hold them off at the periphery, a forlorn hope…

It was too late in any case. And above all, Samantha Carter's treason had made a bad situation worse. There was no use speculating how she'd been subverted, what kind of brainwashing she had undergone to exhibit behavior so unlike hers. Watching the few glimpses of her new character on the video feeds, it felt like watching an entirely different person, only sharing a superficial likeness to the former. The face was the same under the garish make-up, younger looking somehow, but the features were arranged in a different set of expressions, more… ruthless, cruel, dominating, reveling in the carnage and suffering happening around her. A Snake's face, as impossible as it seemed.

The Alliance leader had briefly wondered about it. Had the Drakas something to do with this, somehow? He'd quashed the thought soon enough, those new enemies might behave somewhat like the Snakes, but everything else was different. The uniforms, the weapons, even the language. Those warriors were not Janissaries for sure, not unless their masters had taken to tattooing their foreheads instead of their necks. Besides, neither Kheshmet nor "Lord Baal" was Draka names. It was something else entirely, another enemy a wicked universe had sprung onto the refugees.

Frederick Lefarge wasn't a very religious man despite his upbringing. Working for the OSS tended to instill a heavy dose of skepticism and pessimism into one's worldview. And right now he really, really wanted to scream "fuck you!" at God's face, if the bastard was even bothering to look.

Instead his hands gripped the handles of the command chair, the one overlooking the Control Center and its rows of consoles with the panoramic holowall surrounding everything. The stars were still shining steadily, the planet below half illuminated by the distant star's light, completely oblivious to the mortal struggle going on inside the bubble of livable atmosphere hanging alone in space's cold embrace.

At times he'd felt something he couldn't exactly qualify - he wasn't even sure it was not his own overstressed mind playing tricks - the best he could tell was like a faint echo inside his brain, as if he was shouting down a deep canyon and seconds later the sound of his voice, his mind-voice, came back distorted and foreign. As if something was there, hovering at the edge of his consciousness, awaiting to answer the right call, yet he couldn't put his finger on it. A ghost of thought. He shook his head. Vague impressions and illusions didn't help.

At the other side of the link, down in the brightly lit several story high corridor-streets of the station's inner habitat ring, Kheshmet walked with supple fluidity towards the central plaza, Jaffas around her with their helmets deployed, weapons trained outwards even though the area was secured by three hundred of their comrades, most of them in overlooking positions among the cascading terraces and balconies, scanning the wide amphitheater-like village for threats.

Not that such were to be expected. The entire section had been surrounded and cut off two hours ago by Jaffa vanguards, leaving no escape route to the trapped souls inside. Few men, most of them women, teenagers and children who had believed they were safely tucked inside, having sealed the gates and raised a few pithy barricades behind those. The following assault was quick and brutal. Barricades manned by mostly unarmed civilians did not hold Kheshmet's warriors for longer than a minute. A few defenders had died right there and then, and after that resistance had collapsed utterly along with the need to kill.

"My Lady" a tall warrior saluted, fist over heart, when Kheshmet entered the plaza "we have secured this area and gathered the captives. My warriors are ready to push forward as soon as follow-up troops can relieve us from guard duty!"

The Goa'uld inside Samantha Carter's body returned the salute. She had no obligation to do so - Jaffas were inferiors - but it was good practice for a field commander, and these warriors had done well, as expected from an elite legion. She let her gaze linger on the Jaffa facing her - strong features, square jaws expressing resolution and devotion to duty, short cropped black hair, skin tanned by multiple planetary campaigns - and the small honorary insignias on his chest. An experienced man, century old certainly, a veteran of many wars, having survived them as well pointed to both luck and skill. One of the Guard's best sub-unit commanders. Kheshmet delved into her deep memory, putting a name on the face.

"Kejar of Ladnarn" she replied, noting the way he reacted with pride at her recalling his name "you have fought well again. Lord Baal will be pleased. Now, show me those captives."

"My Lady, follow me." He turned aside and shouted at a group of warriors hovering nearby. "Jaffa, Kree!" They fell into a vanguard formation, preceding the officer and the Goa'uld commander as they strode forward into the habitat's lower sections, glancing at the towering support pillars and animated walls, keeping any wonderment they could experience at the display of divine magic for themselves.

They rounded another sculpted framework - an elaborate succession of vertical cascades and water collectors, still bare instead of overfilling with aquatic greenery and flowers as intended. They stood on the lowest terrace, directly overlooking the bottom-most floor and its wide central pool filled with crystalline water and a handful of growing water-lilies providing a few scattered patches of green. The entire level was supposed to function as a collecting point for the ornamental waterworks running throughout the whole habitat, as well as handle an accidental overfill. As a result there was no level access. The only ways down were shallow stairs, although overhanging gangways and platforms allowed audacious minds to plunge down into the pool if they wanted. Now those were supporting Jaffa guards, staves pointed down at the pool sides where the captured civilians huddled and pressed together on the soft plastic beach, unconsciously wanting to put the most distance between themselves and the watching guards.

There were more than a few gasps and muffled exclamations of surprise when the prisoners spotted the familiar-yet-different face of Samantha Carter. Murmurs ran low, questioning, wondering. Kheshmet watched in glee, savoring the scent of fear and unease coming from the thousands of human cattle huddling below.

She made her eyes flash, and spoke loud and clear, her deep Goa'uld voice seamlessly amplified by the collar she wore.

"**Kneel, humans, for you belong now to Lord Baal, King of Kings, God of Gods, Master of all Living Souls!"**

Incredulous words and expressions answered her statement. Anger now, curses and insults rising from the cattle. She laughed inwardly at the scattered "snake!" epithets muttered or outright shouted at her. The involuntary confusion was highly entertaining to her, possessing the corresponding memories of Major Carter. Yet defiance had to be crushed. And as always she was going to take pleasure in doing so.

"**SILENCE!"** the word boomed across the cathedral-sized space. She pointed to one of the most vocal dissenters, a male teenager (as such often were) whose eyes flashed defiance almost as brightly as a Goa'uld glare, and made an imperious gesture with her hand. "**Jaffa, Kree!"**

Answering her call, a squad of warriors strode down to the human mass and then opened a way in the most brutal manner, using steel-shod boots and staff butts to smash heads and bodies aside, parting the sea of captives like a boat and leaving a wake of bruised and bleeding limbs behind them. Their target tried to flee as they came, clawing at the flesh in his haste to escape - hopelessly. The guards watching from above wouldn't have allowed it even if the ones below hadn't caught up, the looming threat and the immediate brutality breaking any idea of resistance before it could even take hold.

The young man was grabbed by the arms and collar, hauled up and dragged away despite his flailing and screaming, and dropped again like a sack of meat near the bottom of the stairs closest to Kheshmet even as more Jaffas established a cordon outside, keeping the first rank of captives away.

Silence fell, only broken by scattered gasps and sobs, and the Goa'uld slowly descended the flight of stairs, savoring each step down with a wicked smile on her lips.

"Hmmm" she purred, stopping in front of the group. She met the black-haired teenager's gaze, noting how it kept flicking down to her chest and below, his imagination running wild even though the form-fitting garment left little to it. She traced a finger down his jaw. Strong already yet delicate and smooth like a child's. He didn't flinch. That took some spirit, she thought. "Manuel, yes? I remember your name. Your father was a soldier, I think… no?" she asked seductively, keeping her eyes locked with his brown ones.

"My father's a Marine and he's going to kick your butt, you bitch!" the youngster spat back with teenage scorn, shaking the grip of his Jaffa captors.

_Slap!_ The backhand strike cut through the air and left a red mark on Manuel's cheek.

"Fool! Your father is dead, as is everyone who fought us on this station!" Kheshmet's reply was stone cold. "His death was honorable at least. Yours won't!" she hissed, then snapped an order. "Jaffa! Hold him!"

The pair of warriors kept a strong grip on the boy as their female overlord collar-handled him over the pool's edge. She felt him tense again, putting all his youthful strength into resisting her pressure - not enough, it only made it so much more enjoyable as she forced his face down under the water's surface. She held him there for a minute, sensing his struggle to break above and breath, and pulled up. Sputters, then a single ragged, deep inspiration before he went down again. The struggle resumed, bubbles streaming to the agitated surface, and she held him longer before pulling again. She repeated the process a third, then a fourth time, each time longer, each time the struggling growing weaker, the boy's strength drowning away. A desperate scream rose from the crowd, a female one.

"Stop, _please,_ stop, _kill me_ instead, _leave my boy alone!_"

A woman had risen out of the squatting, cowering mass of prisoners, and she was weaving her way towards Kheshmet's group a hundred paces away, placing her steps by instinct over the rest of the bodies as she kept her gaze imploringly fixed in the aliens' direction. She traced a crying line through the shell-shocked flesh, begging for clemency all along until she threw herself down on her knees behind the Jaffa cordon, prostrating herself supplicating in the space vacated by her companions of infortune, recoiling from her as though she was doomed already and touching her would doom them as well.

"Please, lady" she raised her face, flushed and wet from her crying "please kill me instead don't kill my sonny please let me do anything for you -"

"**Will you?"**

Kheshmet stared at the mother, keeping the son's face a millimeter above the water as he made retching sounds. Vomit splurged from his mouth, spoiling the purity of the pool.

The supplicant woman nodded nervously. "I'll kill myself if you want to, just, just please don't kill my Manuel" she spluttered out under the Goa'uld's coldly calculating gaze.

"**Jaffa! Let her pass." **The warriors opened a gap as instructed. Kheshmet switched to English.

"Come" she snapped out at the woman, emphasizing the order with a curt shake of her head.

"Stand" the mother did so and Kheshmet walked closer, leaving the young man in the Jaffas' grip. A silent mutual examination followed, apprehensive and fearful on one side, slyly, wickedly amused on the other. The woman was slightly shorter than Samantha Carter, brunette and brown-eyed, her skin complexion and delicate features showing her Hispanic heritage, trembling in her grey civilian overalls. She was somewhat familiar in Carter's memories. Time spent in various social circles during the New America project, back in the Solar System - _we'll need to check this place too_, the symbiote thought - had produced some mutual recognition and Kheshmet's enhanced memory recall produced a name as well.

"Cristina Brackman" she detached each syllable as if they were rare delicacies, her voice back to her host's natural one. "I remember your delicious crab cakes." Souvenirs from a habitat party on Ceres. Cristina's gaze turned incredulous at the turn of conversation, before it became more personal.

"You certainly have a pleasant physique too, for the mother of a sixteen year old child. Strip."

"What?" disbelief colored the woman's voice at the preposterous request.

"**Strip! Or -"** Kheshmet gestured back, letting the threat loom in the air. Cristina's eyes widened at once, flicking to her son's prone form.

"Mom…" he whined out, saliva dribbling down the side of his mouth.

"Don't look, don't say anything Manuel, please be strong for me!" she tried to put some strength and encouragement in her tone even as her heart beat faster, her skin flushed from anticipated shame. She waited until her son averted his face from her incoming humiliation, and then unzipped the jacket emblazoned with the _New America_'s crest, uncovering the white brassiere underneath. A practical one, designed for support and comfort rather than looks like a sports bra, it covered most of her chest. She felt the gazes of her fellow captives on her back as well as the Jaffas', leering behind their stony masks. Carter, no, Kheshmet was drinking the sight, pupils dilated, lips slightly parted. It felt perverse, sinful. Whoever this being was, she was a Godless deviant, as shameless as the Draka themselves. But there was nothing a mother wouldn't do to save her child.

Cristina went on, unstrapping her bra, her mind blank, going through the gestures like an automaton, eyes fixed forward vacantly. She barely remarked the other woman biting her lip in appreciation. Behind her, her fellow New Americans averted their eyes, respectful of her ordeal save a few teenagers who stole ogling glances.

Trousers and panties followed jacket and bra on the discarded pile and Cristina Brackman stood straight and naked, her arms dangling along her sides, making no effort at hiding her nudity. She was expecting to be raped - growing up on the same planet as the Domination of the Draka at least made a woman passingly familiar with the idea. How many of those not-Janissaries would plow her was the only unknown part, she figured.

She didn't quite expect the crimson-clad female to close the gap between them in one stride, one hand closing around her right breast while the other wormed its way between her thighs. The wife - now a widow - straightened under the touch, rejecting it by instinct and decency. It wasn't right, wasn't right at least those soldiers were men but this - her half-strangled cry of surprised disgust was snuffed out by the mouth closing on hers and the tongue probing out, tasting her obscenely - a perverted mirror image of the other body intrusion taking place down below. Cristina's intimate muscles clenched automatically against the finger pushing up and Kheshmet cursed. It wasn't so much the resistance - that was expected - than the utter lack of reaction to her touch. Her tongue felt like exploring a dead, inert mouth and the dryness below didn't change. The naked woman was inert save for her reflexive squeeze, dry and inert. Frigid against the Goa'uld commander's expert assault. That was a worse insult.

"Bitch" Kheshmet hissed, recoiling from the uncooperative woman. "Enjoy seeing your son die!"

She glanced back and made a cutting gesture with her left hand, even as her right swung up, the golden device on her palm flashing into life. A bright glow speared down from her elevated palm to the brunette's forehead, and her body reacted to the excruciating pain tearing through her limbs, eyes bulging open, falling on her knees with her strength sapped dry, head paralyzed, upturned, receiving the full wrath of the Goa'uld above her. Shivering, convulsing, yet unable to move out of the agonizing beam, eyes rolled upwards showing their whites, face contorted in terror and pain, mouth open and dribbling on her chin, caught under the spell of the pulsating light spearing her brain.

In fact, she didn't see the Jaffa's blade sliding under Manuel's throat, and the pulsing jets of blood reddening the water below until the beam vanished, cut at the source, and a thin thread of consciousness reclaimed her mind, battling the aftershock and the dying waves of pain cutting her nerves open down their length.

"_NOOOOOOOO!" _the scream coming from her mouth was ragged-sounding, and her eyes went from the sight of her dying son's last convulsions to the coldly satisfied face above her, anguish and hate competing among the tears.

"**Now**" Kheshmet turned to face Kejar who was still standing a few paces away, watching the cowed crowd of captives with a close expression. **"Rape her!"**

The Jaffa's stone mask barely cracked, an eyebrow rising higher than the other. "My Lady? I am a warrior, and there are still living enemies…" he put all the respect he could muster into the suggestion. He was longing for combat, for honorable battle. Rape, while occasionally pleasant, wasn't something to do when the battlefield was still contested. And the display had left a sour taste in his mouth. There had been no need to draw out the execution, and his clan valued family enough that he took no pleasure in watching a mother lose her unique son. Even rebels and heretics, he was persuaded, deserved a measure of compassion, a clean death at least. Fortunately the sound of footsteps, hundreds of footsteps clanging on the hard floor as more Jaffas poured into the open spaces, saved him from having to abuse the female captive himself.

"Then the relief unit will have their way with those cattle" his commander snapped out impatiently. "I'll lead the final assault personally. Kejar, assemble the rest of your warriors. The prize is near!"

xxx

Another hour. Another hour and the _Divine Fist of Unity_, one of the strongest Goa'uld motherships in this sector of the galaxy, would exit hyperspace in the star system containing the fabulous prize awaiting Baal. A fully functional Ancient station. One left in quasi stasis for millions of years, dating back to the nebulous early days of the Gatebuilder civilization. It wasn't the technology alone. In fact, going by the captured human female's memories it might not represent a tall leap over contemporary Goa'uld capabilities. But instead of the bits and pieces and small trinkets the first Goa'uld lords in recorded memory had used to create the foundations of their empire, this was much bigger. Who knew what insights the databanks inside the station could reveal about its near-legendary creators? There were always tales and rumors about the Gatebuilders. Often they were nothing more than wild stories. In some cases, enterprising Goa'ulds looking for lost or hidden wonders had disappeared outright, victims of powers far beyond their wisdom. In a few other recorded cases, and those were always difficult to confirm for no Goa'uld wanted to let his competitors learn of their most prized treasures, ancient artifacts had yielded some of their secrets to a careful owner.

Maybe, just maybe the Ancient construct would yield clues as to the galaxy's greatest mystery, an enigma every Goa'uld had pondered since the species had learnt travelling the stars. What were the stargate's eighth and ninth chevron for? Nobody had ever found out, and not for lack of trying. It was said that Ra himself, millennia ago, spent a century dialing random combinations from an isolated stargate, to no avail, and stopped only after exhausting the naquadah of a whole star system, enough to build entire war fleets, powering the experiment.

The Baal clone pondered all this behind his customary half-smirk. A facade intended for his minions, handpicked Jaffas from his core worlds, warriors of experience who all had proven their loyalty beyond doubt. Men whose ancestors had fought for their present master, whose families were among the most prominent and honored. Dynasties of loyal servants who served not merely because of blind indoctrination but also because it was in their genuine interest to do so. Those, in Baal's experience, made the most accountable and effective servants. Not every System Lord understood this, and those who didn't, who ruled by fear and fanaticism alone, were so much more vulnerable to foreign subversion - beginning with the damn Tok'ra.

At least he was reasonably certain that no Tok'ra agent was hidden on this ship, thanks to the stringent checks performed on every member of the crew. The danger of sabotage and infiltration was too high otherwise, as many a careless Goa'uld in history had found when his powerful and near invulnerable "war chariot" had blown up under his regal bottom.

Just another hour, and Baal would be able to watch his new possession with his own eyes. He'd departed after the initial assault, with confirmation that a secure beachhead was established inside the orbital city and expectation that fully reducing the defenders would probably take days, such was the size of the contested territory. If everything had gone according to plan, the mothership would reenter realspace and find the place mostly under control.

The next question would be what to do with the humans inside. Strenuous interrogation would be useless. Most likely, everything worth knowing had already been revealed inside the female captive's mind. The location of their home planet was interesting, deep inside what used to be Ra's private domain, and apparently among the first ever to be colonized and populated with human slaves. Maybe even the first, the Tauri of legend and old lore, the source of the System Lords' slave population. An interesting find certainly, and worthy of future investigation whenever the more important matters of war were dealt with.

**Inside Freedom Station**

"General Lefarge"

The man nearly flinched at the sudden call. He'd been watching the various readouts and display with almost hypnotic attention, an attention proportional to the impotence he was actually reduced to. The safety of the habitats had proven to be a false one and they had fallen one after another, practically undefended; and now he was forced to watch as tens of thousands of the people he was sworn to lead and protect kneeled in submission beneath the alien invaders' weapons. Kneeled, or worse. The attackers hadn't bothered to deactivate the surveillance devices, an obvious act of psychological warfare intended for the last defenders, those hundreds locked inside the station's core and maybe a few scattered tens under the dome, hiding in the barren wilderness.

He still had cards to play, he tried to convince himself. The ships were still there, still manned and operational. But what good could they bring except for some kind of Draka-ish suicidal gesture? Detonating their antimatter fuel inside or near the station might destroy or cripple it. And then the last free humans from Earth would be gone. Such an ironic thing it would be, the General thought, reminiscing his last conversation with Von Shrakenberg. An insurance policy for the human race, he'd said. Well, it was looking like the fucking Draka would be the last ones standing as it was, at least until whatever alien power it was knocked at Sol's door.

The unexpected call had interrupted the pessimistic brooding. And replaced it with renewed anger, for it was Carter's voice, belonging to that Kheshmet murderer, her face snapping into focus on his side display.

"Hello, General" the voice repeated seductively, playfully. It was enjoying itself. "I know you can hear me, this communication panel cuts straight into the command emergency circuit."

"You" Lefarge spat with all the contempt he could muster, raising a short laugh from the other side of the conversation. Bright white teeth, long eyelashes lowered before mirthful blue eyes, the arrogance of a gorgeous young woman fully conscious of her power and willing to use it to obtain whatever she wanted from men. But this wasn't a teenager despite the looks, and the power it wielded was far more than simply sexual. It was the power of life and death, the power of the victor holding the fates of defeated enemies in his hands. And it, she knew, knew through the Colonel's memories how little was left to the human defenders.

It was time to acknowledge it.

"Me, I, Lady Kheshmet, courtesy of this endearing host body, one fit for a Queen really" she slowly rubbed her hands over her chest to emphasize her comment. Lefarge's gaze hardened.

"What do you want" he ground out between his teeth, dreading the answer.

The red-clad woman tipped her head higher, straightening her already arrogant body attitude. Her own eyes flashed and she replied in the deep guttural tones of her species.

"**I want your complete surrender, in the name of Lord Baal."**

Seconds ticked by before a response came.

"I saw how your kind treats prisoners. Why should I trust you? Why shouldn't I destroy this whole installation instead and take you all out with us?"

"**War always implies…"** Kheshmet shrugged minutely "**unfortunate collateral damage."**

"Collateral damage?" Lefarge's tone was laced with fury and disbelief "Is that how you call what you did to that family? Killing the son in cold blood and forcing his mother to watch? You fucking… bitch, if you're even female to begin with, you have no idea what -"

"**Oh but I have, General. I know everything about the Alliance for Democracy, and the Domination of the Draka. I know your people were beaten, broken, and you are but refugees, exiles, cast off from your star system aboard those pitifully backwards things you call starships"** her smirk was contemptuous as she paused, eyes boring into Lefarge's. **"I am offering you a way to survive, under Lord Baal's authority. Accept, and today's suffering will be over. Your people will be transported to a safe, fertile world to spend the remainder of their lives unharmed."**

She switched over to Carter's normal voice, as much to preserve her host's vocal cords as to play a psychological game, counting on the voice's familiarity to influence her interlocutor.

"Of course, you will have to relinquish your technology. You will be permitted to live as farmers and artisans. The use of any written language and technology higher than animal, wind or water-driven machinery will be forbidden under penalty of death. In time, your children will grow up to be Lord Baal's loyal subjects."

The General took a deep, forceful breath, forcing himself to stay calm even though he felt like screaming and punching the display. His stare drilled through the vid-link.

"This is no better than being under the Yoke" he spat out.

"Actually it is" Kheshmet replied nonchalantly. "Your descendants will still be human instead of genetically engineered cattle. And above all, they will be alive."

She let a moment of reflexion sink in, then added "You have ten minutes to decide. After that, my warriors will start executing the captives. Beginning with the children."

She spared another glance at the uniformed man, and then switched off the communication panel.

It was a hard bargain, as Lefarge was left to contemplate. But the bitch and her warriors held most of the cards and he couldn't deny it however much he wanted to. He didn't have an army anymore and the ships - well they couldn't do much except open fire on Freedom Station and kill everyone. He might have been willing to do that if the invaders had been Drakas, but…

He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair, feeling more wary than he'd ever been. Could he believe Kheshmet's promise that his people wouldn't be harmed? Would they be left to live their lives alone? It was a hope, a hope that, centuries later their descendants would be alive and maybe, maybe they'd find freedom again. And the horse might learn to sing.


End file.
